


One by One

by Rand0mSmil3z, silver_doe287



Series: Midgar Paranormal Investigators [1]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Aerith makes ghost friends, Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, Cloud hates ghosts, Ghost Hunters, Paranormal, Paranormal Investigators, Spooky fic, Tifa hates ghosts, Weekly Updates, Zack has the time of his life, halloween fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:00:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 40,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27047605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rand0mSmil3z/pseuds/Rand0mSmil3z, https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_doe287/pseuds/silver_doe287
Summary: The Midgar Paranormal Investigators aren’t new to the ghost hunting business. After all, with one psychic, three veterans, a photography student, a Wiccan, a leader that's terrified of ghosts, and one coffee-obsessed cranky old dude, what hadn’t they seen? For this rag-tag scooby gang, however, the Shinra Manor - and its bad habit of making people disappear - would be an investigation they would never forget.
Series: Midgar Paranormal Investigators [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1974103
Comments: 10
Kudos: 55





	1. The Tour

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! 🧡 Rand0mSmil3z speaking.
> 
> So after swearing that I wasn't going to write more than two fics simultaneously, I immediately began writing a third lol. October has put me in SUCH a spooky mood, and for me, nothing feels like Halloween more than paranormal investigators explored old, decrepit, half-forgotten properties. _Especially_ if the unexplainable begins to happen, as our favorite characters quickly find out...
> 
> Enjoy the ride 🧡
> 
> Silver_doe287 here! The best thing about writing is finding kindred writing spirits and I am so overjoyed to have somebody as amazing as Rand0mSmil3z to share in the obsession of writing and editing fics for this incredible fandom! Since it's Halloween season and the weather is blustery, cool, and I even saw a couple snowflakes yesterday, it only seems fitting to throw our favorite group of characters into a Halloween-esque fic, too. Hang on for the 3-chapter ride as the scooby gang takes on the infamously haunted Shinra Manor, once a home, once an asylum...

If there was ever a _truly_ haunted house, this was it.

The Shinra Manor sat forgotten against the hillside, its walls groaning with age as the wind moaned through the dilapidated, dying property. Decaying vines of ivy clung to its stone walls, staining the gray granite with shades of brown, black, and yellow. The manor’s windows, once formed from intricate stained glass, were long since cracked and faded. The wind moaned through them and disturbed the faded curtains draped against the glass. It was all too easy to imagine skeletal hands pulling back the faded fabric, all too easy to see sunken eyes peering down at the van pulling into the empty, leaf-strewn lot below.

Cloud Strife climbed out of the van, his exhaustion temporarily forgotten as he beheld their target for the first time in years. The Shinra Manor had aged poorly since he had last seen it; the stone path leading up to the front doors was cracked and covered with lichen and moss, and early morning dew had flattened the dead, brown grass. A chilly wind suddenly swept through the gloomy property and whispered through the cracked windows, which elicited a haunting groan that sent shivers down his spine and confirmed the thought that had chased him all the way here:

He really, _really,_ didn’t want to do this.

“Are you going to help or not?” Zack called to him from behind the van. Zack’s hands were full of equipment, and he wore an easy grin as he began carrying his armful of tripods and microphones to the manor. “At this rate,” he added as he strode past, “we’re going to leave you behind.”

Cloud sighed, running a hand through his spiky blond hair and giving a last once-over to the abandoned building. Suppressing a shudder, he muttered, “As if,” before obediently headed to the back of the van where Tifa and Aerith were.

Tifa, the leader of their group, was busy organizing some of their other equipment – namely thermometer guns and radios – while Aerith was preparing her sage bundle to smudge the van.

Cloud arched an eyebrow at Aerith just as the sage began to smoke. “Aren’t you supposed to do that after the investigation?” he asked.

“That’s the normal procedure,” Aerith replied, flashing him a brief smile, “but it can’t hurt to be overprepared.”

“Makes sense,” Cloud replied, though inwardly he thought, _no shit._ He shot another wary glance at their target… only to see something shift in the corner of his vision. His pulse quickened as his eyes darted to the spot - _Did I just see something move just now? -_ but of course, nothing was there besides faded curtains and broken glass.

Cloud shook his head with a harsh sigh. _Calm down,_ he ordered himself. _It was just the curtains._

“Cloud, would you grab the cameras?” Tifa asked, drawing his attention back to her.

The cameras she wasere referring to were their thermal and infrared cameras. “Sure,” he replied. The cameras were housed in two thick cases, and though they were surprisingly heavy, he easily lifted them with one tucked in each arm.

Zack had already deposited his equipment near the Shira Manor’s front door and was currently wheeling a prepped generator over to the property’s front gate. He whistled a cheerful tune as he passed through their wrought iron, seemingly not noticing the literal and metaphorical chill in the air. But Cloud noticed, and it took all of his self- control to not hesitate at the gate’s threshold before he too passed into the main property. Setting the camera cases down beside Zack’s growing pile, he knelt next to the generator after Zack set it down and double checked the fuel level.

“This should last us the whole night!” Zack patted the generator enthusiastically and shot Cloud another excited grin. Cloud only grimaced as he recapped the tank, then used the generator to help push himself back onto his feet.

They hadn’t even started their investigation yet, but he was _already_ exhausted.

Tifa joined them soon after, and had immediately busied herself by giving the piled equipment a once-over when a new set of footsteps approached. The newcomer was an elderly man who was short and, to be blunt, also a bit scrawny. His beard was white, wispy, and matched the thinning hair on his head. But it was his face that Cloud noticed first; though it was set with heavy wrinkles and came accompanied by dull eyes, the man’s expression had an inherent kindness that had him minutely relaxing.

“Welcome to the Shinra Manor,” the man said in greeting, and his thin lips twitched upwards into a smile.

Tifa wiped her hands onto her plaid pencil skirt. “Perfect timing,” she replied politely, and she stepped in front of both Cloud and Zack to shake hands with the man. “My name is Tifa Lockhart. And I take it that you’re Burke?”

“That’s right,” the man replied. “Burke Horst, at your service. I’m the caretaker of this property. And this is your team?” he added, looking behind Tifa to peer at Cloud and Zack.

Tifa nodded before introducing the two of them as they shook Burke’s hand. His hand felt cool and thin in Cloud’s grasp, almost as if it was made out of paper. “And the final member of Midgar Paranormal Investigators, Aerith, will be here shortly,” Tifa added. “She’s just preparing the van.”

“Here!” Aerith said, bounding up to them. The sage still smoked in her grasp, but she hardly noticed as she shook Burke’s hand. “Nice to meet you, and thank you _so_ much for letting us investigate!”

“Yes, thank you,” Tifa added with a small smile. “We’ve been hoping to investigate the manor for a long time now.”

 _Maybe_ you _were,_ Cloud frowned, shifting his weight to his other foot. _As for the rest of us…_

The sudden tap of Zack’s elbow to his ribs had him immediately smoothing out his expression; he hadn’t realized he was scowling.

“It’s no problem,” Burke said, chuckling. He hadn’t seemed to notice Cloud’s sour expression. “In fact, it should be _me_ thanking _you_. There were some glowing reviews from some locals about you guys.”

He pointedly peered at Cloud as he finished the sentence, and Cloud only shrugged to hide his growing flush. His mom had undoubtedly put in a good word, and judging by Tifa’s embarrassed grin, maybe her dad threw in a good word for them too… though Cloud didn’t hold his breath. It was an open secret that Tifa’s father had wanted her to be a full-time lawyer instead of a part-time bartender, part-time paranormal investigator team lead. Meanwhile, Cloud’s mom had just been thrilled that he had gotten a job.

“So,” Burke continued as he shifted his attention back to Tifa. “Are you all ready to check out the place? We have a lot of ground to cover.”

Tifa nodded. “Definitely,” she replied before turning towards Zack and Cloud. “Would you two mind going on the tour with Burke? That way, I can stay here and help Aerith get everything set up for our lockdown tonight.”

“Can do,” Zack easily replied, and he rolled out his shoulders. Excitement flickered in his dark eyes. “Want me to bring my thermal camera?”

“Yes, please. And Cloud,” Tifa added after a moment’s pause, “don’t forget your recorder this time.”

Cloud already had the recorder in his hoodie pocket. “That was only _one time,”_ he huffed, but he dutifully pulled it out and double checked that it was fully charged and ready to go. “Did Barret and the others finish their half of the research?”

Tifa hummed in response. “Thanks for the reminder. I’ll call them while you guys are inside.”

“Yuffie probably distracted them,” Aerith giggled.

“Nah, Barret will keep them in line,” Zack countered with a grin. “Or Cid. They’re probably psyched that we actually have an investigation.”

Aerith’s expression brightened. “An investigation on Halloween, too! This is _so_ exciting!”

“Yay,” Cloud deadpanned, conveying the enthusiasm. “Can we go now?”

Zack laughed and threw an arm over Cloud’s shoulder, making Cloud’s scowl deepen. “Sure thing, Spikey.”

“Don’t call me that.”

Burke lightly coughed, drawing the attention back to himself. “Well,” he managed, expression revealing he was unsure what to make out of Zack’s obvious excitement and Cloud’s absolute lack thereof, “if you two would just follow me…”

“Have fun!” Aerith called to Cloud and Zack as they followed Burke towards the front doors. “Let us know if you see any ghosts!”

“And don’t forget to turn on your recorder, Cloud!” Tifa added.

“I already did!” came Cloud’s response. This was an absolute lie, and he subtly flicked the recorder on just as he stepped through the Shinra Manor’s expansive, ancient front doors.

The atmosphere immediately shifted.

Silence weighed heavily in the entrance hall, which was an exaggeratedly large room dominated by massive, looming windows. Whitewashed walls bled brackish stains and moisture clung to the rotting wallpaper. A rusty, iron chandelier creaked above them, its momentum pushed along by a phantom wind. Its haunted sound whispered through the flanking corridors and quietly ascended the winding staircase.

Cloud swallowed thickly and kept his gaze firmly on the floor, where his leather boots met the rotting carpet. He had _sworn_ that he would never come back here, _sworn_ that he had left this place for good, and now that he was here… well, he wanted to do nothing but run back to the van, hop in the driver’s seat, and head back to Midgar. No _matter_ what Tifa said, or how much Zack and Aerith would undoubtedly tease him.

“Scared?” Zack whispered.

Cloud glared at him, but Burke’s weathered voice quickly drowned out his retort.

“The manor was built by the Shinra family almost two-hundred years ago,” Burke explained as he led them through the hall and towards a set of double doors in the back. “It was a private residence for its first fifty years, but after the sudden death of the owner, it was converted into an asylum. After a series of unexplained disappearances and multiple sales to different owners, business here was abandoned. Eventually, the manor was converted into public land. However, due to the legends surrounding this place, it has remained uninhabited.”

With that, Burke guided them towards the right and then through an archway. Zack swept the new area with his thermal camera, shaking his head at Cloud’s inquisitive glance. Nothing out of the ordinary reported yet.

Not that Cloud was complaining. He nervously fidgeted with his recorder as Burke continued, “And this is the kitchen, which doubled as the nurse’s station.” Sure enough, the entire room was neatly divided in half. Old cupboards, their display glass long since shattered, were stacked beside metal trays and leftover IV stands. Dusty pots and pans rested beside empty cups and plastic pill boxes. The refrigerator door was open, revealing glass beakers, syringes, and bottles of old alcohol.

Zack nudged Cloud, and murmured, “Think the alcohol is still good?”

Cloud gave him a disgusted look. “Why don’t you take a sip and find out,” he replied, his tone just as low. But Zack only laughed.

“Any questions?” Burke asked.

“I have one.” Cloud inspected the area, careful not to touch anything - Aerith would freak out, probably quoting something about spirit hauntings at him if he did. Pushing that thought out of his mind, he asked, “How many nurses were employed here at a given time?”

Burke stroked his chin and thought for a moment. “Usually around eight or nine, if my memory serves,” he finally answered. “While the manor was an asylum, it could house twenty patients at a time, though around thirteen was the average.”

“Thirteen is a lucky number,” Zack commented with a wink towards Cloud.

Cloud huffed his annoyance.

“I don’t think the patients would agree,” Burke said with a hum, and then reached into his breast pocket to pull out an old photograph. Handing it to Zack, he continued, “This is what the manor looked like in its prime.”

Zack whistled. “Pretty nice,” he said, and then passed the photo to Cloud. “I wouldn’t mind living here.”

The photo was a shot of the manor’s exterior. It was grainy and bleached of color, but there was no mistaking the manor’s towering windows, the impressive front entrance, or the elaborate garden winding out its front. Full roses bloomed over the lush hedges.

Cloud’s gaze darkened. When he had been a child, those hedges were still there, albeit dead and dry. He remembered how their thorns pricked his skin and…

* * *

… _and then he was tearing through the bushes, his hands cut and blood beading on his pallid skin. A pale moon cut through the brambles and stained the world silver beneath it. The hot tears streaking his cheeks glistened beneath the muted light, and his choked cries were swallowed by tangled vines as he fought his way through the dead rose garden. One thought permeated his entire being, a sharp fear that sang through his blood and burned his raw nerves:_

_He had to get away._

_He had to escape._

_Something was following him…!_

* * *

“Cloud?”

Cloud jolted. “What?” he replied immediately. His voice was strained, and his heart hammered in his chest. Fire seared his nerves. It took him a moment to remember where he was, and then another long moment to remember _why_ he was here, but when it finally sunk in…

He firmly shook his head, dispelling the last of the flashback. “Sorry about that,” he said, and passed the photograph back to Burke, who was watching him with a concerned expression. “Nice, uh, picture.”

Burke frowned at the photo. “I suppose… but anyway.” He slipped the photo back into his breast pocket. “If you wouldn’t mind following me…”

His footsteps echoed against the hardwood floor as he led them back into the hallway. The windows loomed over them as they headed back to the other end of the manor.

Zack’s footsteps lagged until he was walking beside Cloud. “So what was that?” he asked under his breath.

“Hm?” Cloud glanced up at him. “What was what?”

“You know,” Zack replied, frowning. “ _That._ You sort of… zoned out in there.”

A flush crept up Cloud’s neck, and he pointedly looked away. “No I didn’t.”

“Except you did,” Zack insisted.

“It was nothing.”

“Except it was.” Zack’s frown deepened. “Look man, I don’t want to hover or anything, but are you doing okay? Feeling… you know, _normal_?”

Cloud frowned at him. “Normal?”

“If you want,” Zack hurriedly continued, as if Cloud had never spoken, “we can cut this early so that Aerith can take a look at you…”

“Wait.” Cloud’s voice took an accusing tone. “You think a spirit _attached_ itself to me?”

“Maybe,” Zack said with a shrug, but then his expression grew more severe. “You never know. This is supposedly a super active place, and since you grew up near here, then like… I don’t know, maybe the spirits like you. Find you familiar or something like that.”

“There’s no such thing as spirits,” Cloud shot back, and shoved his hands into his hoodie pocket for emphasis. “And besides, I’m fine. Let’s just… focus on the tour, and get this whole thing over with.”

Zack’s frown was still focused on him. “If you say so,” he said after a lengthy pause, allowing Cloud to enter the other archway opposite the kitchen first.

But thankfully, Burke’s voice once again spared Cloud from having to reply.

“This room was originally used by the Shinra family as the main banquet hall, as well as for entertainment and dancing,” the caretaker explained as he walked into the middle of the room.

Cloud’s gaze swept across the room. Burke _had_ called it a banquet hall, but the large room struck Cloud to be more musically inclined. A dusty piano had been shoved unceremoniously into the corner; all of the ivory keys were coated in a thick layer of dust, and some were missing entirely. The thin stacks of aimlessly placed sheet music resting on top were all but legible, and the notes had long since faded.

Besides the distinctly black piano, broken violins were strewn on the floor and yellowing sheet music was scattered against the worn wooden floors. Stonework bled into the atrium in the back and led into a cylindrical tower with windows encircling it, once grand, now abandoned and broken. The sweeping windows did little to warm the room; instead, the atmosphere was cold, dark, and dreary. A single table had been shoved in the corner against one such window, and chairs had been haphazardly shoved around it.

Cloud crossed his arms across his chest and suppressed a shudder.

This room hadn’t changed at all.

“The Shinra family prided themselves in being music prodigies,” Burke said. His voice rose above the heavy atmosphere, and though he spoke at a normal volume, he still sounded strangely muted. It was almost as if he was talking from the other side of the manor, even though he was standing right beside Cloud. “Their children would often perform in recitals and the like. However, during the manor’s asylum days, the nurses would attempt to perform music therapy and teach some of the healthier patients basic instruments. They believed that music could cure the various afflictions of the soul,” he added with a shrug.

“‘Afflictions of the soul’?” Zack echoed.

Burke nodded. “Back in those days, mental illnesses - including anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia – were considered to be an impairment of the soul; as in, the person’s Lifestream was somehow out of sync with the Planet. The nurses here believed that _music_ could help retrain the soul and realign it with the Planet’s Lifestream. Of course,” he continued with a dry chuckle, “that ideology has been disproven time and time again. That being said, it _has_ been proven that music can help patients with anxiety and depression. But I’m not a professional.” He shrugged, as if to say, _what do I know?_ “Don’t quote me on anything.”

“Sure,” Cloud replied. He swept his gaze across the room, trying and failing to ignore the cold shiver trembling down his spine, but what made him pause was that the table was still fully set. There were plates, salad bowls, and glass cups situated around it. A teapot was set in the center. Tiny tea cups were purposefully displayed beside it, and if he looked closely, the cutlery had dust imprints around them… almost as if they had been recently moved.

“Does anyone come in here often?” he asked, frowning at the imprints.

Burke glanced at him in surprise. “No,” he replied. “I’m the only one with a key to the place.”

 _That doesn’t mean much,_ Cloud thought, recalling how the neighborhood kids of his childhood would routinely sneak in here, but he nodded his head regardless.

“Should we place a camera here tonight?” Zack asked, following his gaze with a frown..

“Probably,” Cloud replied, eyeing the suspiciously clean silverware. “Just in case.”

Burke suddenly cleared his throat. “Anyway,” he continued, “when the manor was converted into an asylum, the dining hall was stripped of its more… _entertaining_ qualities, such as its full-length dining table, and all furniture from there on out was then bolted to the floor to prevent the patients from hurting themselves. While the furniture has been removed,” he added, “you can still see evidence of the bolts in the floors.”

“Do you know of any fights that broke out?” Zack questioned as he swept the temperature camera across the room, his gaze narrowed and lips pursed. “Or any deaths?”

“Fights were surprisingly uncommon,” Burke replied, but then his tone changed. “There… have been a few deaths, however.”

A chill went through Cloud. “Where?” he asked, already regretting the question.

Burke glanced at him. “We’ll get there,” he promised.

Cloud thickly swallowed, and the tour continued.

“Next up is the second story,” Burke said, and he began guiding them to the winding staircase in the entrance hall. Cloud and Zack shared a look before following. “The second floor is the most interesting aspect of the manor, if you ask me. It’s also the most active,” he added with a strange light in his eyes.

Zack’s eyes blazed with excitement. “Active?” he echoed.

Burke chuckled dryly at Zack’s enthusiasm. “Yes. In fact, there are a few curiosities there that I think you boys would find very interesting for your investigation.”

“Really?” Zack’s expression brightened, and he turned to Cloud. “We totally need to get Aerith in here too. Maybe she could sense something!”

Cloud shrugged. “Maybe...” he replied cautiously.

“‘Sense’ something?” Burke repeated, the question obvious in his tone.

Zack turned to the caretaker and nodded. “Yeah. She’s like, psychic. It’s pretty wild, actually. One time we investigated an old theater in Midgar, and she knew _exactly_ how the ghost died the moment she walked in, and then she figured out why the ghost was haunting the place. And as soon as she learned that,” he added, lifting a finger, “she purified the entire theater. It was pretty crazy to watch.”

“And she did it all in a few hours,” Cloud added, recalling the moment Aerith had blessed the property with a silent reverence. “Normally, something like that would take… weeks, probably.”

“She sounds very talented,” Burke commented thoughtfully.

Zack nodded his agreement. “She is!”

They had made it to the stairs during their conversation, and Burke led their ascension up the winding stairwell. As his boots fell onto each step with a reverberating echo, Cloud swore to himself that the temperature dropped a few degrees. The air also felt heavier, _thicker,_ even, and he took a deep breath as he shuddered through the thick fabric of his hoodie. Zack, not dressed as warmly in his band t-shirt and plaid flannel, didn’t look cold in the slightest.

Cloud turned away, frowning even as another shiver trembled down the small of his back. _You’re fine,_ he told himself firmly. His hand gripped the banister tightly as he followed Burke and Zack up the stairs, his knuckles bleached white with the resulting tension. _Besides, you investigate places all the time. This isn’t a big deal._

He lifted his gaze to the chandelier; studying the spiderwebs draped over its iron spires and how a thick layer of dust smoothed its jagged edges.

Tearing his gaze away, his mind echoed, _This isn’t a big deal._

Burke turned to the left and began to guide them to another set up double doors. “Shall we start with the greenhouse?” he asked.

Zack’s expression brightened. “Yes please.”

Dread curled deep in Cloud’s gut, but he resolutely squared his shoulders and followed Burke and Zack into the next room.

The greenhouse was exactly that – a greenhouse. Overgrown green ivy snaked up the walls while mosses crowded their pots, growing over each other in spongy carpets. Pine tree saplings grew crooked in their containers without a stabilizing stick to hold them in place, while small oaks and broad-leaved palms arched towards the smudged windows in stark determination. The air inside was humid and stuffy.

Cloud wrinkled his nose at the heavy scent of mulch and musk. “Do you water these plants?”

“I do,” Burke proudly replied. “As caretaker, it is my responsibility. But shall we move on to the bedroom? It is much more exciting in there, and I believe that your team may enjoy that room the most.”

Cloud sincerely doubted that, but he nodded his agreement and allowed Burke to continue on their guided tour. Yet Zack hovered in the greenhouse a moment longer.

“Zack?” Cloud called over his shoulder, halting his momentum immediately. “We’re going to leave you.”

Zack blinked, as if in surprise. “Ah, yeah. Coming, coming.”

“See anything on your camera?”

“Just a cold spot.” Zack managed a thin smile as he joined Cloud and Burke at the doorway. “But it may just be a coincidence.”

“Probably,” Cloud said, though his mood soured further and he stuck close to the other two as they continued down the hall. _Gods,_ he hated this manor. Maybe he should have stayed in Midgar, where it was safe. _Well,_ he thought, frowning, _safer._ Sure, he may get mugged walking back to his apartment after his day job as a pizza delivery driver, but at least he wouldn’t be getting mugged by a damn _ghost_.

 _Except ghosts aren’t real,_ he firmly reminded himself as Burke led them into the bedroom. _Zack probably just caught a cold draft..._

 _Yeah, that’s right._ The more Cloud thought about it, the more the idea solidified in his mind. _The window was probably just cracked or something, and that’s how the camera caught the cold spot._

The thought soothed his frayed nerves, and it was suddenly easier to focus as Burke threw himself into his next explanation.

“This was originally the master bedroom,” Burke said, “though following the death of the Shinra head of household...”

“Death?” Zack sounded positively _delighted._ “Did it happen in this room?”

“Yes,” Burke said with a sagely nod. “According to official reports, the death was due to a heart attack. But as you can imagine,” he added with a shrug, “there are rumors that the heir poisoned his father in order to inherit his fortune.”

Zack nodded enthusiastically before turning to Cloud. “That would cause a haunting _for sure,_ ” he said, which had Cloud scowling. “You know, like the father wants revenge on the son so his spirit lingers?”

“Sure, but can’t we just focus?” Cloud asked before turning to Burke. “So what happened after the death?”

“Following the death,” Burke continued, “this room was converted into the main patient center for the asylum.” Sure enough, rows upon rows of metal bunk beds lined the expansive room. The few mattresses that remained on the bunks were sagging and very clearly falling apart, their fabric torn and the rusted springs poking through. Zack swept the thermal camera through the area with barely contained glee. “You’ll notice that the bunks have been nailed into the floor.”

“To prevent the patients from injuring themselves,” Zack quoted from earlier in the tour.

“That is correct,” Burke concurred. “Originally, there would have been grandiose paintings displayed on the far wall, but those have long since been removed and placed in storage.”

Cloud blinked in surprise. He actually didn’t know that. “Really? They weren’t placed in a museum?”

“They were, once,” Burke admitted with a sheepish grin. “They went to the museum in Junon. However, the patrons there soon began having… problems.”

“Problems?” Zack echoed.

“Visitors to the museum reported seeing different faces in the paintings, or the same faces but varying expressions. Soon the rumor began to spread that the paintings were cursed, which you can imagine that the museum was less than pleased when their sales plummeted. So,” he finished, his tone bland, “they returned the paintings, and they have been in storage ever since.”

“Are they here?” Zack asked, eyes alight with anticipation. Cloud personally believed that Zack sounded _way_ too excited about the prospect.

His excitement only mounted when Burke sagely nodded and replied, “They are.”

“Let’s go see it.” Zack turned to Cloud, his eyes practically _dancing._ “We should. You know, for research purposes. So we know where to look later.”

Cloud would rather go remove his own wisdom teeth than look for that painting – not that he’d ever tell Zack that. “Maybe we should look at the library first,” he suggested instead, turning to Burke with the most pleading expression he dared. “And besides,” he added just for the hell of it, “I’m sure Tifa and Aerith will be finished with their preparations soon, and we don’t want to keep them waiting.”

Zack watched him for a moment, only to smirk and cheekily say, “You’re scared, aren’t you Spikey.”

Cloud flushed. “I am _not._ ”

“Cloud is right,” Burke interrupted, and Cloud just about sighed in relief. “I have gotten a bit carried away, and we shouldn’t keep the rest of your team waiting any longer. I can briefly show you the library, as you so helpfully pointed out, and then we can head back out.”

 _Thank the gods,_ Cloud silently exhaled.

“But I am surprised,” Burke mentioned as they all slipped back into the hallway. Glancing at Cloud, he continued, “I haven’t met too many people familiar with the manor.”

“I grew up around here,” Cloud said by way of explanation. “So did Tifa, actually.”

“Did you now?”

Cloud nodded. “But how about you?” he asked as Burke led them into the next door, which was right across the way from the bedroom. “I lived in Nibelheim until about six years ago, when I was fourteen, but I don’t recall seeing you.”

“Ah, that explains it then.” Burke dryly chuckled, as he was prone to doing. “I moved out here some five years ago, from Midgar. The city was too busy for me.” He shrugged. “I’m growing old, and the mountain air suits me much better.”

“So how did you end up taking care of this old place?” Zack asked as Burke opened the door to the library.

Burke’s expression was almost sad then, but only for a moment. The expression passed the moment he turned back to Zack and smiled thinly. “I am interested in old properties,” he simply said.

Cloud schooled his expression into something bland. _He’s lying,_ he immediately realized. Shifting his weight onto his other foot and continuing to remain expressionless, he thought, _But if he’s lying… then what’s the real reason he would want to watch over the manor?_

He racked his brain trying to come up with a reasonable answer, but he only got a headache for the trouble. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he silently cursed and tried to pay attention to Burke’s rambling explanation about the significance of the library, how many medical books there were, how the asylum patients also shared this space as a gaming room with puzzles, coloring, and card games.

“What’s with the safe?” Zack suddenly asked, dragging Cloud out of his thoughts and into the moment.

“The safe?” Burke arched a quizzical eyebrow, only to follow Zack’s line of sight and suddenly grin. “Ah, the safe! It has been here since the original Shinra family owned the property. However, it has not been touched since then.”

Cloud also knew that that was a lie, and that the neighborhood kids would often try to open the safe growing up. All of their efforts had ended in failure, to his knowledge. “Do you know what’s inside?” he asked.

Burke shook his head. “I do not,” he replied, “though I am inclined to believe that there may be some objects of sentimental value inside. There were rumors of a diary of some sort. Perhaps even some money.”

 _Money?_ Cloud eyed the safe with new interest. Maybe part of their investigation could be to investigate how to open the safe. Bills weren’t going to pay themselves, after all, and paranormal investigations weren’t exactly making them millionaires.

 _Though,_ he thought after a pause, _that would probably be stealing._

He sighed and looked away from the safe, disinterested. “And the storage rooms?” he asked, trying to move the tour along.

“At the other end of the hallway,” Burke said. “Would you like me to show you, or…?”

“We can find it on our own, no problem,” Cloud promised, and then gave Zack a look, daring him to contradict him. Thankfully, Zack didn’t. “Besides,” he continued, turning back to Burke, “I’m sure Tifa and Aerith are done by now, and waiting for us.”

“Aerith would also want to check out the storage room,” Zack added as they made their way back down the stairs. “And probably the greenhouse too.”

Cloud nodded his agreement. “And the piano,” he added.

Their combined footsteps rattled down the steps. “Piano?” Zack said, giving Cloud a look.

“Yeah, the piano,” Cloud replied. “Spirits love pianos.”

“They do not.”

“They do. Trust me.”

Zack laughed. “Cloud, you’re my best friend. _But,”_ he grinned as they made it to the first floor, “that does not mean that I trust you.”

Cloud made an inelegant noise and flipped him off when Burke wasn’t looking.

Zack only laughed harder, and the three of them passed beneath the chandelier and, finally, through the front doors. Cloud deeply inhaled the moment they passed over the threshold and entered the outdoors; the air was clean and crisp, and he strangely felt several times lighter, like a weight had been lifted off of his shoulders and he could _breathe_ again.

Even Zack, who was famous for being the least affected on their investigations, looked a bit shaken. “Woah,” he said, shooting Cloud an odd glance. “Did you feel that?”

As much as Cloud wanted to outwardly deny it, he eventually nodded.

“Ah, you two felt that as well, didn’t you?” Burke asked, standing in front of them with his hands clasped behind his back. He smiled fondly. “The same thing happened to me when I first began caring for the property, but don’t you worry. You’ll get used to it.”

Cloud doubted that. He grew up here after all, and though he made it a point to never come to the manor after the _incident_ , he distinctly remembered the sudden clarity he had experienced when he had finally managed to escape.

Tifa hurried towards them the moment they appeared. “How did it go?” she asked breathlessly. It didn’t escape Cloud’s attention that her gaze darted over his shoulder, towards the entrance of the Shinra manor. “Did you notice anything?”

Cloud nearly followed her line of sight, but immediately thought better of it. “Just a few promising locations,” he answered with a vague shrug.

“Did you bring your recorder?”

“Yeah.”

“And you turned it on?”

“That was only _one time,”_ Cloud replied, scowling. “And yes, I did.”

“And I swept the area with the thermal camera,” Zack added with a grin, but then his smile faltered. “There’s a few places on the second floor Aerith could take a look at.”

Aerith, who had been frowning at one of the windows, perked up when she heard her name. “What type of places?” she asked curiously.

“A small greenhouse and the storage room,” Zack replied, beaming at her.

“Zack thinks he found a cold spot in the greenhouse,” Cloud elaborated, “and there are apparently some haunted paintings in storage.”

Tifa blanched. “Haunted paintings?”

Cloud met her pained expression and nodded, regretfully.

“Well.” Burke cleared his throat. “I’ll be headin’ home now, unless you kids need anything else from me.”

Tifa managed a smile. “No - you’re good. You’ve been perfect Burke, thank you. We’ll take care of the rest.”

“I certainly hope so.” Burke squinted up to the second floor, towards the faded curtains that continued to whisper with the chill mountain breeze. “We’d certainly appreciate all the help we can get. But anyway.” He lowered his gaze with a thin smile. “I’ll just be five minutes down the road. Holler if you need anything.”

“Will do,” Tifa promised, and with that and a brief wave Burke began walking away. The group watched until he disappeared behind the hill, heading down the dirt road. With a harsh, nervous sigh, Tifa turned back to the rest of her team. “Well… shall we start?”

Cloud shoved his hands into his pockets. “Do we have to?” he muttered under his breath.

“Of _course,_ Spikey,” Zack said with a laugh. Slinging his arm over the shorter man’s shoulders, he added, “Aren’t you _excited_ to finally have a paranormal investigation so close to your home?”

“And somewhere that’s supposedly so haunted, too!” Aerith added enthusiastically.

Cloud made a sour face. So did Tifa, for that matter, but it was Cloud who replied, “ _No._ ”

And so began their lockdown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand the first chapter is done! I hope you all liked it - next chapter, the team begins their investigation but gets far more than they bargained for...
> 
> The next chapter will be posted on Saturday, October 24th. Until then, stay safe and I wish you all the best 😊
> 
> Stay spooky 🧡👻🎃


	2. The Lockdown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Saturday! 😊 I hope everyone has had a good week so far!
> 
> First off, thank you all _so much_ for the kudos and subscriptions! I'm so happy that you're enjoying the story so far, and I hope you enjoy this one just as much!
> 
> Enjoy the chapter! 👻🔦
> 
> Silver-doe287: Chapter 2 of this Halloween-themed fic is upon us... and with that, 13,000+ words of suspense, excitement, and spookiness! Stay tuned next Saturday for the thrilling finale of this story in our new Midgar Paranormal Investigators series...

If the Shinra Manor looked haunted during the day, then at night it truly felt ominous. Starlight ran a silver finger against its stone walls and stained the ground in a pale, sickly glow. The broken windows reflected the full moon in a series of cracks and brittle fragments. The heavy, faded curtains swayed with the dry breeze, and every once in a while, the grass would rustle and brambles would sway as if something was passing through. Yet no matter how quickly Cloud turned, nothing was ever there. The mystery had goosebumps peppering his arms and his heart fluttering behind his ribs; he had never been afraid of the dark before, but now apprehension hissed across his nerves and subtle fear sharpened his senses. It felt like something was _taunting_ him.

_But that’s stupid,_ Cloud thought as he shifted his flashlight across the front entranceway, scowling all the while. Ghosts _weren’t_ real and the manor _wasn’t_ haunted. Sure, the dilapidated property was spooky, and the groaning doors and creaking floorboards admittedly gave him the creeps, but that didn’t mean that anything _paranormal_ was happening. It was probably just… the wind or something, or maybe the building settling.

That’s what Cloud told himself, anyway.

“Wow,” Aerith murmured, breaking through Cloud’s thoughts as she stepped into the front entrance ahead of them. Her own flashlight cut a beam of light through the thick darkness. “There’s something… I don’t know how to describe it,” she admitted as she turned to the rest of the team, and her sheepish smile was visible despite the gloom. “There’s _definitely_ something here, something that I’ve never felt before. And it just feels really, really powerful.”

Cloud turned his flashlight to the highest setting and shone the brighter yellow beam onto the steps in front of him. _Why would you say that_? The stairs suddenly looked more worn and ominous than they had with the earlier sun; the shadows seemed darker, and it was far too easy to imagine eyes blinking at him from the shadows...

“Powerful?” Tifa repeated next to him, with only the slightest waver to her voice. “Like… do you think it’s _evil_?”

Aerith frowned. “I’m… not sure, really.” She took another step into the manor, and her shoes clicked against the tiled floor of the front hall. Zack, Tifa, and Cloud followed her inside, the latter fighting back the urge to shiver as the dark, foreboding feeling settled over him once more. As Aerith wandered further into the hall, her green eyes narrowed at the thick shadows, and the iron chandelier groaned perilously above her head. “It almost feels like something is _blocking_ me,” she continued, her soft voice edged with frustration. “Like there’s something else here, but it’s thrown a veil over my eyes, and it’s harder to see.”

“That’s spooky, man,” Zack said as he swept his camera around the room - _without_ the infrared feature, Cloud noticed with a frown - before he suddenly grinned and swung the camera towards Cloud.

Cloud immediately lifted a hand to hide his face, which had Zack laughing. “So, what’s the plan?” he asked, trying to ignore Zack and maintain _some_ level of professionalism. He had to keep the team focused, if only so that they could get in, do their investigation, and leave as soon as possible. “Are we sticking together, or splitting up, or…”

“I’m going back to the van,” Tifa immediately replied, not skipping a beat as she took the slightest step back the way they came.

Zack turned, his grin and camera now focused on her. “Because you’re chicken,” he told her matter-of-factly.

“No!” Tifa wrinkled her nose and pointedly ignored the camera in her face. “Because… well, someone has to keep an eye on all of the camera feeds! And what if one of our EMF’s gets a reading, huh? Someone has to pay attention to it. A - And besides, I’m the leader, and I said I’m going to the van. So there you have it.”

Her tone dared anyone to contradict her, which of course, no one did. _But why does she even still do this if she’s so nervous,_ Cloud silently mused, and pointedly ignored the fact that he could ask himself the same question.

Zack laughed at Tifa’s small explanatory rant. “Suit yourself,” he said good-naturedly, before lowering the camera and pausing his recording.

“I will,” Tifa replied with a small frown, and then turned to the team psychic. “What would you feel most comfortable with, Aerith? You’re the one who’s the most sensitive out of everyone here, so if you’d rather explore with a partner…”

“No, that’s okay.” Aerith tilted her chin towards the second floor, and the starlight from the tall windows brightened her eyes. “I think I want to check out the second floor. The… strange feeling I have seems the strongest up there, I think, and I want to check it out.”

“Bring a recorder, just in case you catch anything,” Tifa told her.

Aerith nodded solemnly.

“And that means,” Tifa continued as she turned to the boys, “that you two will explore the first floor together. Does that work for you guys?”

“Whatever,” Cloud answered, feigning boredom. Inside, as much as he hated to admit it to himself, he knew he would feel much more comfortable wandering the abandoned manor with a partner. Like _sure_ , ghosts weren’t real and all of that, but what if he… twisted an ankle, or something? This place was in pretty bad shape... Maybe the floorboards would break underneath him. It was hard to predict something like that.

Zack bobbed his head in agreement. “Sounds good,” he replied and then turned to Cloud, his grin sharp. “I’ll take care of our scaredy-cat.”

Cloud scowled. “Watch it, Fair.”

Zack only laughed.

“Perfect,” Tifa sighed, stretching her arms in front of her. “Everyone has their radios fully charged, right?” Cloud felt in his pocket behind the radio clipped to his belt for his earpiece, thankful he’d remembered to grab it from the van. After a chorus of agreements from the rest of the group, she continued, “Well then, I’ll be in the van if anyone needs anything. Report _anything_ strange the moment you notice it.”

“Will do!” Aerith promised, followed by noncommittal noises from Zack and Cloud. Tifa, satisfied with the team’s preparedness, hurried back to the van while the other three plugged in their earpieces and flicked on their radios. Once they were all set, Aerith ascended the grand staircase while Zack and Cloud decided to investigate the old music room.

There was a chill to the air inside the manor now, one that had not been there during the day. It was cold enough that goosebumps peppered Cloud’s skin underneath his hoodie, his breath misted the air, and a shiver rippled down his spine.

Zack shone his flashlight through the room. “Pretty cold,” he said, echoing Cloud’s thoughts. His breath fogged the air. “Does this place kinda remind you of…”

“The northern crater?” Cloud supplied. Just light that, his mind was flung back towards their military days and then he could feelthe snow crunch beneath his boots, could hear the harsh wind howl across the crater, could feel the snow melt against his face and drip into his thick fatigues. Back then, his eyelashes would threaten to freeze together when he blinked and his fingers felt fat and numb within his gloves.

“Those were good times,” Zack said, his tone almost wistful. “I could have done without the snow, though. That was far too cold for a tropical boy like me.”

“It was definitely way too cold,” Cloud agreed. Even for him, who had grown up in the mountains, the chill found the northern crater was something entirely different. There it had been far colder than Nibelheim, and the cold had cut far deeper.

He strangely felt the same now. The cold of this room slid effortlessly through his hoodie and the wind moaned against the windows, except now it almost sounded as if there were _words_ buried within the ghostly breeze… and it was all too easy to imagine that there were _things_ lurking within it.

Cloud suddenly wished that he had offered to join Tifa back in the van.

“Yo, Spikey,” Zack said when they reached the music room’s large atrium of space. His voice echoed strangely in the expansive room. “Do you… hear that?”

“No.” Not that Cloud had been paying attention, and he quickly pulled his K2 meter out of his back pocket. He held it out and pointedly studied it, looking for any detection of colors beyond green, signifying differing electromagnetic fields. “I don’t hear anything.”

“There’s definitely something there.” Zack’s footsteps echoed tentatively as he walked slowly to the piano, frowning all the while and lifting his camera up. “It almost sounded like… a voice?”

“I didn’t hear it,” Cloud replied with a shrug, trying to swallow the rapidly growing anxiety that threatened to blossom from his chest. “It was probably nothing.”

“I heard you the first time,” Zack said absent-mindedly as he swept his thermal camera across the room, and the screen’s dim glow lit up his face in muted shades of blues and reds as he turned the camera on Cloud. “Everything looks normal… You’re a normal temperature, at least!” Cloud looked up, exhaling slowly as he confirmed that the K2 meter was fully operational, just not sensing anything out of the ordinary. “But other than that, I _swear_ that I just -”

Without warning, a single note rang out in the air.

Cloud and Zack both went still, their figures frozen in their hunched poses. After a long, heavy pause, Zack was the first to recover and he spun around, the camera screen little more than a pixelated blur as he settled his sights on the piano.

“ _Guys?”_ Tifa’s voice rang out from the radio static into Cloud’s ear. _“I just detected some sort of activity in the music hall…”_

Cloud forced his hand to move to the radio, slowly pushing the button and adjusting the microphone. “We know,” he breathed into the receiver.

“You weren’t kidding about the piano thing, Spikey…” Zack said, his voice low and strained.

Without warning, another note sang to the chilled air. It immediately went sharp, clearly out of tune, and shivered against the cracked windows and the chipped porcelain teacups lying still on the table. It hissed against the floor and breathed down Cloud’s neck, lifting the small hairs of his arms and sending his heart fluttering into palpitations.

_Ghosts aren’t real, ghosts aren’t real, ghosts aren’t real…_

He swallowed thickly and, slipping his hand into his hoodie pocket, flicked on his recorder – cursing himself in the back of his mind for not having it out already. Tucking it under trembling fingers of the hand also holding his flashlight, he asked, “Is anyone here?”

The K2 meter suddenly spiked as its needle jumped into the red, only to immediately sink back into the green.

“There’s something here,” Zack whispered, camera still focused on the piano. “Detecting a cold spot.”

Cloud cleared his throat. “You don’t have to be afraid of us,” he said, switching tactics with a tone meant to sound confident and compassionate. This was a statement Aerith had often said, though _she_ insisted she was talking to spirits while Cloud was happy to pretend that he was having a heart-to-heart with a lamp instead. “We’re here to help.”

“The cold spot is moving.” Zack’s voice was little more than a breathless whisper that accompanied the rapidly dropping temperature in the room. “Cloud, it’s headed your way.”

_Why would you tell me that?_ Cloud wanted to shout, and it was all he could do to plant his feet and ignore the desperate urge to start sprinting in the other direction. “What’s your name?” he asked as the K2 meter once again spiked. He waited an appropriate few moments for the recorder to pick up something that perhaps they couldn’t hear. Then he added one final question that was on his mind:

“Did… Did anyone hurt you?”

Silence fell heavily onto the room. It was an unnatural sort of silence, the kind that was suffocating and cold, the sort that muted the wind. Not even the dust dared to dance beneath the filtered starlight, and Cloud held his breath, unwilling to even breathe.

Then, without warning, Zack scowled. “The cold spot disappeared. Nice going Cloud, you scared-”

“ _Here,”_ something whispered through a broken throat, and an unholy sound suddenly slammed forth from the piano. It was a harsh jumble of conflicting notes and contrasting melodies, an angry clash of broken tones and cutting heartache, and Cloud’s first thought was, _Fuck it._

A quick shared look with Zack was all it took; they nodded in mutual understanding and sprinted out of the room.

They didn’t dare look back.

* * *

Back in the van, Tifa was definitely freaking out. “Can you hear me, guys?” she asked one more time, after double checking her radio to make sure the green light was on. It was, meaning the interference wasn’t on her end, but that did little to smooth the floodgate of nerves that threatened to drown her.

It didn’t help that the EMF chart had stuttered at the sheer amount of activity that it had detected in the music room. Thankfully, it had already begun to calm, though their camera – which had been set up on one of the music room’s many tables – revealed an empty room. Zack and Cloud were long gone. Furthermore, nothing disturbed the camera’s green-tinged feed; only dust and moths spiraled beneath the moonlight.

Movement suddenly shifted in another camera and Tifa’s eyes flicked to the screen, her breath caught in her throat, only to sharply exhale when Aerith’s form appeared in the greenhouse. Her lips were pursed as she fumbled with her radio.

“ _Tifa?”_ Aerith’s voice soon crackled into Tifa’s mic and cut through the radio silence, which did much to calm Tifa’s ragged nerves. Uncertainty stained Aerith’s words as she continued, _“What was that?”_

“Aerith,” Tifa breathed in relief, and nearly began to ramble about the activity and how Cloud and Zack weren’t responding, but she managed to catch herself. _You’re the leader,_ she reminded herself. _Act like it!_

Swallowing her unease, Tifa began, as calmly as she could manage, “There was a spike in activity in the music room, and it sounded like the piano started to play.”

“ _I heard that,”_ Aerith replied a moment later. _“Didn’t realize that it was the piano, though.”_

“Yeah. I think it was a spirit, but Cloud and Zack ran out of the room and I’m not seeing them on any of the cameras, either. And… And they’re also not replying,” Tifa added, and there was no helping the worry that bled into her tone. “Do you think they’re okay?”

“ _I’m sure they’re fine,”_ Aerith immediately replied. _“This is Zack and Cloud, after all. But do you want me to check on them?”_

As tempting as it was… “Let’s give them a few more minutes to check in,” Tifa replied. “No need to panic just yet.”

“ _Sounds good.”_ Aerith then turned to the camera that they had set up earlier and smiled; it was a soft smile, little more than a gentle curve to her lips, but it was incredibly reassuring and Tifa felt the tension slowly leave her shoulders. _“Don’t worry – you got this.”_

Tifa’s eyes pricked, and she managed a shaky smile despite knowing Aerith couldn’t see it. “Thank you,” she said honestly, and then returned to her focus on the music room when the unmistakable sounds of breathing filtered through the heavy static of the radio.

The van chilled several degrees as Tifa froze, unsure what to do. It was as if a mic had been flicked on without being realized and the breath sounded heavy, nearly pained, and her heart beat heavily in her chest. This couldn’t be a ghost messing with their equipment… could it? It wasn’t unheard of, but…

“Cloud?” Tifa managed to say, her voice little more than a squeak. “Zack? You there?”

Yet only harsh breathing continued to echo through the static, and for a wild moment, Tifa thought about leaving the safety of the van and going to look for them herself. Why wouldn’t they answer her? What if they’re hurt? Sure, they were experienced investigators, but accidents happened. What if they _needed_ her?

She was just about to tell Aerith to meet her at the front entrance when, all of a sudden, a peal of laughter – laughter that could only belong to Zack – roared through the mic. His laugh was deep, hearty, and almost bordering on hysterical as it came through the speaker of the radio.

“ _You absolute_ _ **asshole**_ _!”_ Cloud growled angrily from the radio that had been breathing, obviously the source of the noise Tifa and Aerith had heard. Had Cloud been scared? “ _That’s_ _ **not funny**_ _!”_

Tifa grabbed her radio. “Guys? Can you hear me?” she asked, stumbling over her words. “You guys okay?”

“ _You should have seen your face!”_ Zack continued to laugh. _“Oh my god! Oh my god, your face! Did I get that on video?”_ There was a giggle followed by the rustle of fabric, and then: _“Oh my god, please tell me that I got that on -”_

There was some shuffling, followed by a loud _smack_ and a yelp.

“Guys?” Tifa said, trying again. “You there?”

The suddenly breathing returned, followed by a click and a very meek, _“Tifa?”_

“Yes, Cloud?”

“ _Uh, how much of that… you know, never mind.”_ Cloud cleared his throat as Zack continued to laugh in the background, and Tifa could easily picture the dirty glare Cloud was throwing Zack’s way right now. _“Um, so yeah, something happening in the music room.”_

It was obvious that Cloud was trying to put on a brave face, and Tifa couldn’t help but smile at the valiant, but futile, effort. “I noticed a spike of activity from over here,” she replied into the mic. “Did you record it?”

“ _Think so.”_

“Good.” Tifa’s gaze darted back to the camera, where it continued to show an empty music room. “So, what happened?”

“ _Probably nothing.”_ Cloud’s grumpy voice returned, and there was a guarded edge to his tone that had her pausing. This went beyond his usual reluctance to believe in paranormal activity; right now, it sounded more like outright denial. _“Zack was probably just screwing with me.”_

“ _I_ _ **swear**_ _I wasn’t, Spikey!”_ Zack’s voice echoed from a distance, full of laughter and mirth. _“That was legit! Damn, that was crazy. Like Tifa -”_ There was sudden movement, an indignant _hey_ from Cloud, and then Zack’s voice rang clearly, _“all of a sudden, we were by the piano and it just started playing by itself! And at first it was one note at a time, but then it was like BAM!”_

“ _Ugh Zack, stop breathing on me!”_

“Guys,” Tifa interrupted, putting on her best authoritative voice. The boys immediately ended their spat, and she continued, “Where are you now? And Zack, did you get anything on the camera?”

“ _We’re near the front entrance, in one of the halls,”_ Zack replied, _“and hell yeah I did! There was this crazy cold spot too, and it_ _ **really**_ _liked our boy Cloud here.”_ There was a laugh, and he added, _“I think Cloudy has a new best friend!”_

“ _Would you quit that?”_ Tifa could hear Cloud’s huff through the radio. _“This place isn’t haunted, okay? There’s no ghosts here.”_

“ _Then why were you talking to the ghost, huh?”_

“ _Because that’s standard procedure!”_ Cloud huffed again, louder this time, and muttered a curse under his breath before continuing, _“Tifa, I’m heading out to the van. I’m gonna grab another camera to set up in the music room.”_

Tifa heard what Cloud wasn’t saying, that whatever had happened had actually rattled him and that he needed a few minutes to compose himself – preferably away from Zack, who seemed to enjoy egging him on.

She managed a small smile. “Sounds good,” she replied into the mic. “See you in a bit. And Zack?”

“ _Yeah?”_

“Would you mind monitoring the music room until Cloud gets back? But don’t leave,” she added after a pause. “I don’t want anyone wandering around and accidentally getting lost.”

“ _But you let Aerith wander by herself,”_ Zack replied, and the frown was evident in his tone as he pouted in response to her order.

“That’s because Aerith’s special,” Tifa replied with a wry smile, knowing the other woman was listening in.

Sure enough, Aerith’s laughter spilled through the radio. _“You hear that, Zack?”_ she teased. _“I’m special!”_

“ _You sure are,”_ Zack laughed, and then there was a click as he flicked off his mic.

Tifa leaned back against her chair with a sigh. This was strange; she had done dozens of investigations before, and all of them were located at far more dangerous, active locations than the Shinra Manor. Yet it was only now where her nerves were truly getting the best of her. Never before had she wanted to _hide_ in the van, but here she was, unable to even look at the manor without a shiver rippling down her spine.

She could tell that Cloud was the same way, too. They had grown up in this small town together, though they hadn’t exactly hung out in the same circles. Cloud had been shy, nearly painfully so, and had never seemed to have wanted to join her or her friends when they explored the town or the mountains.

Yet all of that had changed when, in middle school, he had called her up to the old, rickety water tower and told her that he was going to join the military. It was a move Tifa had never expected from Cloud – not the shy, gangly, awkward boy she had known – and yet, after he had left, she couldn’t help but scour the newspapers for mentions of his name.

She would have never predicted that they would be working together hunting spirits, but when she had proposed the idea, he had agreed immediately. She wasn’t entirely sure why; it was clear that he hated the thought of spirits and ghosts, and that he regarded the entire paranormal investigation with an air of dread and disdain. Yet, at the same time, she couldn’t recall a time where he had ever _not_ supported her. He had always gone on investigations with her and always supported the team, and it was something that she was incredibly grateful for.

So, if he wanted to hide in the van for a bit, who was she to say no?

There was a sudden knock on the door, but Tifa prepared enough to not startle when Cloud pulled the door open. His lips were pursed in a frown and his hair was more disheveled than normal, undoubtedly from his wild run away from the music room, and spiderwebs were draped across his blue hoodie like strands of fine silk.

“This was a terrible idea,” he said by way of greeting, and his dull tone matched his equally unenthusiastic expression.

Tifa’s lips quirked into a grin. “And yet here you are, grabbing a spare camera.”

Cloud’s brows furrowed, and he made an inelegant noise as he closed the door behind him and sat down on the only other available seat. Running a hand through his hair as he knew it looked a right mess more than usual, and grimacing when his fingers caught a tangle, he muttered, “Just give me a second.”

“Did the piano really get to you that bad?”

“No,” Cloud replied, far too quickly. A scowl permeated his face as he added, “It was probably just… Zack pranking me, or something. It’s not like he’s never done _that_ before.”

Tifa remembered that, and it was an effort to swallow her smile. It was during a previous investigation, and Zack had rigged one of the doors to drop a piece of cloth when someone walked through it… and of course, Cloud had been the first victim. The cloth draped across his neck and his scream was an octave higher than normal.

Of course, the investigation was ruined after that – Zack was laughing too hard and Cloud refused to speak to anyone for the rest of the week – and Tifa made Zack _swear_ to never prank during another investigation. She trusted Zack to hold to his word, yet seeing Cloud now…

“Are you positive it was Zack?” she asked, which had Cloud’s gaze flicking towards the floor.

“Dunno,” he finally admitted, tugging at the collar of his hoodie. “Could be something else. Like… Like the piano strings breaking or something.” He didn’t sound that certain of the alternative and Tifa also didn’t have the heart to tell Cloud just how improbable that was. Cloud changed the subject immediately, and after thrusting his hand into his hoodie pocket and handing his recorder to her, added, “You might as well clear this data out for now.”

Tifa accepted the recorder and set about plugging it into her laptop to download the data off it. “You should have seen the readings,” she said as the data began to download. “I’ve never seen anything like it, and then when you didn’t respond afterwards… I was actually worried about you,” she added with a faint smile.

Cloud shrugged, his cheeks flushed – but from exertion or embarrassment, she couldn’t tell. “No need,” he said. “It wouldn’t be the first time we had radio interference. And you know how these old buildings get – things break for no reason.”

“That’s right,” she agreed slowly, sensing his frustrated deflection but making sure that he knew she would try to keep them safer. “But this time… well, be careful, okay?”

“I will,” Cloud promised just as the recorder finished downloading. After Tifa handed it back to him, he slipped it into his hoodie pocket and continued, “I’ll let you know if anything else happens, okay?”

“Though it’ll probably just be Zack, huh?” Tifa said, unable to help but tease him, but then her expression sobered. Cloud arched an eyebrow at the shift in her expression, and waited patiently until Tifa managed to ask, “Look Cloud, are you going to be okay going back in there?” She wrung her hands in her lap, looking down at them and biting her lip. “It has to be weird, being back near the manor after all these years… I know it’s weird for me, at least.”

“Yeah…” Cloud trailed off, something dark flashing in his eyes as he disappeared into a distant memory she couldn’t see. “It’s weird... But I’ll be fine, Tifa. I’ve done this enough times now.”

“I know you have,” Tifa said, and her expression softened into a smile as she met his baby blue eyes again. “Good luck out there, okay?”

Cloud’s smile was just as soft, an odd expression on his usually stoic face. “Thanks,” he replied.

With that conversation out of the way and his nerves seemingly calmed, Cloud opened the door to the van and stepped back out into the night. The wind’s chill pushed its way inside the van, rustling her papers and brushing her hair past her face, and she shivered at the biting cold that bade her welcome. When Cloud closed the door a moment later, the warmth blissfully returned, and yet Tifa couldn’t help but shiver as she turned back to the camera screens. After confirming everything looked okay – though Zack hadn’t returned to the music room yet, which was specifically what she asked him to do – she glanced back out the window.

Cloud slowly picked his way across the property, the light of his flashlight bobbing in the gloomy night. He briefly paused at the entranceway, and she could see his back stiffen before his shoulders slumped as he sighed and pushed the door open; another pause, and he slowly stepped into the entrance way. She could hear its hinges groan even from the van as Cloud shut the door behind him.

And just like that, the only thing that now kept her company were her camera feeds and the wind moaning through the dark. It was suddenly very lonely by herself. The iridescent lights inside the van were suddenly too blue, too artificial, and the scarf wrapped around her neck felt thin and constricting. She pulled it off with a sigh before reaching for the mic.

“Cloud and Zack,” she began, and her voice sounded unnaturally loud within the confines of the car. “Everything okay?”

There was a sudden rush of static, and then: _“Cloud here.”_ His voice crackled through the speaker; the interference seemed to be back, and Tifa’s brows knit together in concern as she tried to pick out his words through the rush of static. _“I’m heading for the music room.”_

“Aerith?”

Aerith’s soft voice rang clear through the radio after a quick hiss. _“I’m here!”_ There was a sudden bump, and she continued, _“I’m on the second floor, still in the greenhouse. Just trying to communicate.”_

Any luck?” Tifa asked cautiously as she stared at the other woman’s shadow on the feed for the greenhouse. She was standing in the middle of the room, surrounded by what looked like an assortment of overgrown plants.

There was a pause, and then, _“Sort of… but they seem scared, for some reason. There’s this other strange presence hanging around too, one I can’t quite pin down either. I’ll keep trying though.”_

“Sounds good,” Tifa replied, storing that interesting tidbit away in her mind for the time being before she turned her attention back to the feed in the music room. She could clearly see Cloud’s shadowed form as he began setting up the second camera facing the piano, and it was clear he was once again on edge. He continuously glanced at the corners of the room, and occasionally, he would sharply turn around as if something was standing behind him.

Tifa clicked on her mic. “Cloud?” she began tentatively, and she saw Cloud jump at the noise before glaring at his radio, despite her soft voice. He quickly clicked it on.

“ _Yeah?”_ he responded, and to his credit, there wasn’t a trace of irritation in his tone.

“Do you see Zack?” she asked. “He doesn’t seem to be answering his radio.”

She watched as Cloud glanced around the room, his lips pursed and back rigid. _“No,”_ he replied, curt tone coming through loud and clear despite the static as he continued, _“but I wouldn’t worry. It’s Zack – he’s probably just… setting up another prank, or something.”_

Tifa frowned. “Cloud…” she trailed off a bit, concern evident in her voice as it was in her mind. While Zack had a habit of playing pranks, even she knew that he wouldn’t take things too far with Cloud as on edge as he seemed to be. Zack knew when too much was too much, especially with his best friend.

“ _I guess I could go look for him.”_ There was a new edge to Cloud’s tone, not one of annoyance but of something else, and the dim glow of his flashlight swept around the room as she watched. It seemed to particularly linger in the corners and on the window curtains, as if he was half expecting something to crawl out. _“Zack?”_

“Aerith, can you get in touch with Zack?” Tifa asked in the meantime, hoping that the team strategy would bring a quick conclusion to the oldest member’s missing presence.

The static from Cloud’s end seemed to have bled over into Aerith’s side, and it was particularly bad now. _“I haven… een him,”_ she said, her voice echoing strangely as if she were speaking from far away. In reality, Tifa could see her silhouette speaking directly into the mic in the upstairs bedroom camera. _“I don’t thi… at he... ome upstai...”_

“Aerith?” Tifa called again as she checked her radio, but once again, the interference wasn’t on her end. “Aerith, you’re breaking up.” The camera feed went unfocused as she watched Aerith’s form, and the entire image flickered suddenly. Tifa held her breath until it refocused again a moment later. “Aerith?”

“ _I’m… ere,”_ Aerith replied. She was clearly frowning as she walked over to the doorframe and glanced inside the bedroom. Suddenly, she turned away from the camera and seemed to be speaking to something in the hallway. That was enough to make Tifa’s skin crawl, and she rubbed her arms with a rapid heartbeat as Aerith turned back to the bedroom camera. _“Some... happe... thing not… ood.”_

Cloud’s voice, suddenly just as difficult for her to hear, cut through the static. _“... ike what?”_ he asked, just as echoey as Aerith had been. Despite the poor connection, he sounded alert and concerned.

Tifa frowned. Obviously, they seemed to be able to communicate and clearly understand each other, unlike her. Maybe the interference _was_ on her side, then. _Maybe?_

“Aerith, if you can understand me,” Tifa sighed, her foot tapping the floor in a sharp staccato to emphasize her concern, “would you mind heading downstairs and joining Cloud, and then helping him find Zack? I don’t think I want you guys separated.”

Without warning, the radio went dead.

* * *

Upstairs, moonlight drifted between the frames of curtains in sickly silver ribbons, then spilling across the floor and staining the ground a pale hue. The light softened the jagged edges of the broken windows and the hard angles of the doors, until the hallway she was in almost appeared gentle, its glow nearly ethereal with each step Aerith took.

There was something here.

“I’m all right,” she insisted into her mic at Cloud, trying to convey that despite how she really felt. This hallway felt especially different. “I want to check something out up here, and then I’ll mosey on down.”

“Be careful,” Cloud’s voice answered back on the radio. She sighed and stood straight, massaging her temples with her fingers against the onslaught assault taking place in her head.

Voices whispered in the back of her mind, echoing against her skull as they overlapped each other and fought for her attention. There was so much to hear in the chorus in her brain that she couldn’t hope to pay attention to them all. It was beginning to give her a headache, but there was one thing that she couldn’t help but notice… One thing that she couldn’t help but pour all her attention into.

The voices, while soft, were screaming in _pain._ It was a shrill, grating sort of pain, the kind that slid across her bones with chilled knives and pricked her nerves with hot needles. It was the sort of pain that promised things; not just the hurt that it had already inflicted, but the dread of awaiting _more_ hurt, _more_ trauma, _more_ agony, on top of what had already happened.

Aerith’s hand clenched the denim fabric of her overalls above her chest, and her lips pressed into a firm, hard line at the pressure the voices were making her feel. It was no secret – not to her, at any rate – that the spirits were _terrified_ of this place, and that made her less certain of her ability to keep herself or her friends safe as well.

_But_ _ **why**_ _are they afraid?_ She paused at the bedroom doorway and glanced inside, lips pursed and hands clammy. Her gaze jumped from shadow to shadow in the darkness of the room as her heart fluttered. Anxiety sang in her blood, out-of-tune and off-key. Zack and Cloud had mentioned in their recap of the history regarding the manor that this place had once been an asylum; could that be the reason that all of these souls remained here, crying out to her in pain?

Yet the moment the suggestion crossed her mind, Aerith began shaking her head. To her thoughts and the cacophony of voices that sang to her, that didn’t seem like the _right_ answer. While she couldn’t put her finger on it exactly, she still couldn’t help but feel like there was something else here, something that had nothing to do with Shinra or the asylum or anything of that nature. No, there was something else, and she was determined to figure out what it was.

Aerith stepped into the bedroom with a sharp inhale, feeling the flow of that determination push through the adrenaline pounding in her heart. “Hello?” she murmured gently into the silence. The thick, faded curtains framing the windows fluttered as a cold draft curled its way inside the room. Dust danced in the pale moonlight and rested thickly against the bed sheets and the dressers, both whose contents were faded and worn from disuse. “Is anyone there?”

Out of the corner of her eye, one of the shadows suddenly shifted.

Aerith’s gaze darted to the movement with a small gasp, and yet as her eyes adjusted, there was nothing there. The only things in the vicinity were candles resting on top of a nightstand, the wax of the candles yellowed and weeping onto the stand’s old, stained wood. Despite the lack of another presence, there was now a slight pressure that hadn’t been there before, a presence that gently brushed across her consciousness. Aerith stooped down without another thought.

“It’s okay,” she said softly into the twisting shadows as she attempted a smile into the unknown. This part was more familiar. “You don’t have to be afraid of me. I’m a friend.”

This time when the shadow moved outside of her imagination, it took the form of a child.

_“Friend?”_ the chilling wind whispered in a soft sigh.

Aerith’s smile warmed, feeling a comfortable rhythm begin that she could solidly use as a foundation. “That’s right,” she replied, her tone kind and gentle. “I want to help you!”

The shadow solidified more; arms tugged out of the dark, and hands curled against the flat planes of the wall.

_“...Help me?”_ the child echoed, and its tiny voice brushed across the room like a winter’s breeze; thin, pale, and cold. _“Help?”_

“That’s right.” For a brief, fleeting moment, Aerith wondered if she should try to reach Tifa via radio back in the van, but immediately decided against it due to the precariousness of the situation; she didn’t want to scare the child’s spirit after all. “Do you want to tell me your name?” she asked instead. “What happened to you?”

Yet the spirit didn’t seem to have heard her. Instead its small figure warped, and soon Aerith could just begin to make out its foggy edges. If she squinted through the mist, she could just barely make out a delicate nose and a mouth, accompanied by two wispy, glowing eyes that blinked at her in the dark. Small hands and feet slowly became more pronounced, and with a start Aerith realized that the child was wearing a hospital gown.

_“Help?”_ the fragile soul whispered again, words solidifying from the wind and turning more corporeal. _“Help me?”_

“Yes,” Aerith promised, clinging to the hope that she could help the spirit of this child be free. “I want to help you.”

The spirit seemed to consider her offer; tiny lips pursed and eyes narrowed as it weighed at her words.

Then it smiled, and everything changed.

The smile, breaking into a full-blown skeletal grin, was all sharp edges and teeth that had been worn down to little more than nubs. Yet it was the eyes that chilled Aerith the most; they went bright with some sort of wild glee, with a madness that scraped pointed claws against her ribs and breathed hot, grating pants against her neck.

“ _You’re the one who needs help,”_ the child whispered in a gleeful menace.

Then, with Aerith’s next surprised blink, the spirit returned once more to the shadows.

Aerith stared at the spot where it had just been for a moment, the only sound in the room being her muted breathing and blood rushing in her ears. Her heartbeat was erratic and uneven in her ears, even drowning out the soft din of voices in her head. With a shaky inhale, she managed to stand, despite the trembling that threatened to send her tumbling right back down.

“Tifa?” she murmured into the mic, working on keeping the newfound nerves out of her voice. At the same time, she focused on her breathing and began counting down from ten, corresponding each number with a deep exhale.

The only response Aerith received from Tifa was static. Its white noise drowned the room and swallowed the wild melody of Aerith’s thrumming heart.

So she tried again. “Tifa?” she repeated a bit more loudly this time, only to frown in confusion when static was once more the only thing that replied. _Must be interference,_ she thought to herself, muting her mic again. After stealing her nerves, she slowly stepped back out of the bedroom and into the hallway.

The pressure had returned tenfold.

It felt as if small hands were pushing against her legs and trying to force her to go in a certain direction. The whispering voices were also growing; their overlapping voices formed a chaotic symphony that pulsed between her eyes, and she pinched the bridge of her nose to stave off the uneven ache. The hallway stretched out before her, its walls yawning into a pure blackness that made the room feel longer than it did a moment before. While the pale curtains fluttered in the midnight breeze, it was as if the moonlight had been doused and was no longer welcome in the suddenly oppressive space. If she looked hard enough at the shadows, she thought that she could see that child’s sharp smile peering through the darkness…

A shiver ran down Aerith’s spine, and she shook her head to clear her thoughts. _It’s just a spirit,_ she reminded herself calmly, taking a steadying breath as she took the first step down the hall. Floorboards creaked and groaned beneath her boots. _It can’t hurt you._

_Can it?_

Aerith felt her feet bringing her to a halt outside another room, and curiosity got the better of her as she slowly entered. Inside, the pressure seemed to mount in her mind, a harsh squeezing that trapped her head in a vice grip. She took a couple deep breaths and pressed onwards, determined to figure out what was going on.

“ _Aerith?”_ Cloud’s voice crackled over the radio, making her flinch a bit at the sudden noise.

She took a deep breath, steadying her ridiculously frayed nerves. “What’s up?” she asked as brightly as she could manage and tried to keep any sounds of distress from her tone.

“ _Have you seen Zack up there_ _?_ ” If his wavering tone was any indication, it seemed that Cloud was doing his best to seem nonchalant as well – and he was failing. He took a deep breath and let his mic fall silent, waiting for her reply.

Aerith sighed to herself, willing the pressure building to leave the forefront of her mind for a moment. “I haven’t,” she replied. “Has Zack not shown up yet?”

“ _Nope._ ” He drew out the ‘o’ longer than he should, annoyance and ambiguity evident in the way he spoke. “ _He’s... He’s usually not gone for so long.”_ There was a pause, and then he added, _“He’s probably fine, though. This is Zack after all – he’s probably just lost track of time, or something.”_

“Yeah, maybe” Aerith replied softly, inwardly wondering if that was really what was going on. The words of that child echoed ominously in her memories, and she did her best to push them out of her mind. “How about this. Let me check on something really fast, and then I’ll come down to you and we can search together?”

“ _Sure,”_ Cloud replied, a little too quickly. _“That works.”_

Aerith turned off her mic and found herself staring at a bare expanse of wall in the room, one which stretched at a strange angle that was at odds with the surrounding walls. The wall was made of stone, which was nothing special compared to the rest of the building, but her feet led her forward anyway until she stopped right in front of it.

The pressure was reaching a breaking point now. It was all she could do not to wince at the pain and the voices, the latter of which had become full-blown shouting for dominance in her mind. A steady throb pulsed in her temple as she pressed a hand to the cold stone, then she gently exhaled and closed her eyes as she focused her attention inward. Deeper and deeper inside herself she went, until she found what she was looking for and let that small kernel expand; first she felt warmth bloom across her chest and arms before her fingertips began to tingle against the cool stone.

And then she was expanding further. Her consciousness slipped out beyond herself, and then further still with every exhale. The shouting within her head faded to mere whispers. The constant pressure rattling within her skull faded to the gentlest of touches, and ignoring the darker shadows lingering in the corners, she allowed other sensations to spring forth.

The first thing she felt was a strange _openness_ spilling out before her, and it took her a moment to realize that there was another room hidden beyond the stone wall. The room was startlingly large, much like a cavernous pit that could swallow her whole, and she suddenly had the stomach-lurching sensation of standing on the edge of a precipice. Endless darkness tumbled before her farther than her mind’s eye could make out, and without warning images flickered through before her closed eyes: metal tables, leather straps dangling off of walls, glass containers with condensation beading on curved walls that were large enough to fit human beings...

Aerith’s breath caught. Undiluted terror hissed across her veins in licks of fire, and then she was seeing _people_. Suddenly it was _people_ lying on the metal tables, _people_ strapped to leather restraints, _people_ floating in glass containers filled with sludgy, pungent liquid, and it all became too much. The pressure burst like fireworks within her mind, releasing sudden flashes of shock and horror.

_Run,_ her pumping adrenaline demanded. Yet she couldn’t run, couldn’t move even as skeletal hands scraped against the inside of her skull, couldn’t tear herself away even as her mind continued to scream, _Run, run, run,_ _ **run**_ _…!_

There was a sudden pop as if the air pressure had changed.

Aerith’s eyes flew open wide.

A clammy set of hands appeared to materialize directly from the stone wall in front of her. Her eyes widened further at the hazy apparition complete with blunt nails and blue-tinged veins snaking beneath semi-translucent skin, yet it was only when the skeletal fingers splayed and stretched towards her did she realize what was happening. She whirled around, determined to get away from this aggressive spirit _as soon as possible,_ but impossibly cold, strong appendages wrapped around her throat before she could take a single step. They squeezed, cutting off her squeak of terror, and in a moment of panic she dug her nails into the paper-thin flash and _yanked._

Something tore.

Something tore, but Aerith didn’t dare turn around to figure out what. She only stumbled, a gasp trapped in her bruised throat, before she flung herself forward. Desperation rang in her ears as she threw herself out of the room, nearly hitting the doorway in the process before she ran through the hallway with heavy breaths and down the steps two at a time.

She didn’t stop until she came skidding to a halt just inside the music room. There Cloud paced anxiously in the low light of a lamp, and his arms were crossed, head was tilted downward, and a frown that was making a permanent residency on his face. He looked up in alarm at her disheveled appearance, and his arms fell to his sides.

“Aerith?” he asked, uncertainty lifting his voice. “What happened? Are you…” He hurried over as she doubled over, her hands on her knees and breathing ragged.

But Aerith had hardly heard him. She could still feel the cold fingers wrapped around her throat, could still feel the blunt nails digging into her skin, and a shudder rippled down her spine. The unbearable pressure was no longer throbbing in her head, and the incessant whispers had gone quiet – for now.

Cloud leaned forward, studying her face for a few moments before his eyes drifted to the back of her neck. His lips pressed into a worried line. “What is…”

“Nothing.” Aerith winced as she stood fully upright; she could still feel the lingering pressure of fingers around her neck and imagined that whatever mark remained probably looked pretty gruesome. “Really… don’t worry about it.”

Yet her voice wavered and her eyes _burned_ , burned with tears that she didn’t dare let fall, and she was suddenly grateful for how dark the music room was.

“Really, Cloud,” she added at Cloud’s pensive expression. “Nothing happened.”

“Bullshit.” Cloud’s expression darkened, and he jerked his chin towards her neck. “There were _bruises,_ Aerith. They were faint, but -”

“Can we talk about it later?” There was no helping the plea buried in her tone, and it had Cloud blinking in confusion. “Please?”

Cloud blinked again, and then his characteristic scowl returned. He was obviously not happy about it, but eventually he managed a curt nod. “But only if we look at it later,” he added. “Tifa probably has some first aid in the van…”

Aerith’s eyes widened. _Tifa._ Tifa _must_ have seen what had happened, or at least, had detected some sort of reading. Turning on her mic, she quickly said, “Tifa? Tifa, are you there?”

Yet the only response was static, a dull roar that echoed across both their radios and ricocheted against the forgotten walls. Aerith looked at Cloud, who shook his head once, before she tried again. “Earth to Tifa,” she said, now a little louder, “can you hear us?”

But once again, there was nothing. Aerith slowly turned her mic off and wiped her sweaty palms on her overalls. “She’s _always_ replied before,” she murmured, and her gaze flicked back to the stairwell… and the room she knew was lying just out of sight, with the stone wall and ominous atmosphere. A shiver wracked through her again, and she tore her gaze away. “She’s _always_ replied.”

Cloud suddenly stopped. “Maybe…”

“Maybe?” Aerith prompted when it became clear that Cloud wasn’t going to continue.

“Maybe… Maybe Zack isn’t playing a joke on us,” he finally said, and his tone was low enough that Aerith had to strain to hear him. He resumed his pacing. “And now Tifa isn’t responding either…”

“Tifa is safe in the van,” Aerith replied, and when Cloud frowned at her, she continued, “And Zack can take care of himself, remember?”

Cloud huffed a sigh. “I _know_ that. But still…”

“We should definitely look for him, though.” Aerith glanced back at the stairs and suppressed a shudder. “Besides… About the bruises on my neck…”

Cloud’s eyes jumped to hers, their blue bright despite the dim light in the room.

“...Well, I don’t think some of the spirits are very friendly,” Aerith said. A breathless laugh clawed out of her throat, though she wasn’t entirely sure why. “I was upstairs during my investigation, right?”

Cloud nodded in rapt attention.

“And after going through the greenhouse and into the bedroom, I then went to the room at the end of the hall. It was a sort of weird room… there was a – a stone wall, and a bunch of junk inside. But it was the wall that…” She folded her arms over her chest, suddenly uncomfortable. “Well, I really don’t know _how_ to describe it, really…”

She lifted her gaze back to Cloud, only to pause; he had gone _pale,_ and there was a new brightness to his glazed-over eyes that hadn’t been there before. Sure, Cloud didn’t like ghosts - hat was no secret amongst the team – but she had never seen a look like _that_ on him before.

It looked a lot like terror, and it had her wrapping her arms around her a bit tighter.

“Cloud?” she prompted, trying to coax him back to the present.

Cloud jolted, as if waking up from a daydream. Clearing his throat, he asked in a low voice, “This room… It was upstairs? To the right, in the corner? And was the stone wall sort of… curved?”

Aerith blinked in surprise. “Yeah. Yeah, actually.”

Cloud exhaled, though it was little more than a rush of air whistling between clenched teeth. “Did you…” His voice tapered off, and he tried again. “Did you... hear anything?” His voice was so quiet that Aerith struggled to hear him.

She shook her head. “Not exactly,” she admitted with a sigh, and she idly shifted her gaze to his equipment, which was located near the piano. It was then she realized that his K2 meter and his recorder were both going, and there was a camera facing the piano – the source of the noise that spooked the two guys earlier. “I didn’t hear so much as felt it.And it was like...like this _unbelievable_ pressure was pulling me towards the wall. And then when I got there, I tried to focus on any spirits in the room. But then… then there were _hands_.” She unconsciously lifted a hand to her throat and lightly massaged the tender skin, which still ached from her not so pleasant encounter. “But besides that, and this childlike spirit -”

“Childlike spirit?” Cloud repeated hoarsely. His gaze was still pinned on her neck, and his eyes were wide, as if he could see her memory of fingers wrapping around her throat as well.

She managed a weak smile. “Yeah, in the bedroom,” she replied softly. At his alarmed expression, she continued hastily, “But I promise that I’m okay now though. That… _aggressive_ spirit, the one that choked me, seems to be confined to that room.”

Cloud looked down again, and it seemed like he wanted to say more, but instead he shook his head, as if clearing his thoughts. “We should look for Zack,” he stressed, changing the subject. “Or I can look for Zack, and if you want, you can get the first aid kit from the van…?” His amendment came with a questioning tone at the end as he hazarded a small glance her way.

“Don’t worry, I’m okay,” she insisted, placing a hand on his arm. “We should look for Zack _together.”_

Though he didn’t say it, appreciation flickered across Cloud’s features. “Only if you’re positive you’re okay,” he told her. With that, the they set off together in the anxious silence of the house. The quiet was only broken by the sighing of the house as it settled. Wind moaned against the windows as the autumn pressed inwards. The floorboards grumbled beneath their shoes, and each creak had them leaning a bit closer into each other, their respective flashlights shining a bright path through the gloomy dark.

They decided to check the kitchen first. The nurses’ supplies still lay forgotten in the cupboards and on the tables, and while Cloud relayed the few things Burke had told him and Zack earlier, he seemed distracted and his mind was elsewhere. It was clear Zack wasn’t in this room. There weren’t any obviously malevolent spirits, either; Aerith kept both her eyes and her mind open to any new presences, and yet there was a sudden _emptiness_ that hadn’t been there before.

If she didn’t know better, she would have said that the spirits had hidden themselves… and she couldn’t help but wonder if it had been the presence that had attacked her earlier, the same one that had been powerful enough to reach for her throat and _choke_ her. Her fingers idly brushed against her neck at the thought, but she quickly dropped them when she noticed Cloud was watching.

“I’m fine,” she reiterated.

Cloud’s expression darkened and he made a noncommittal noise, but thankfully didn’t press the issue. “Do you sense him? Zack, I mean.”

Aerith bit her lip. It had always been more difficult to sense living beings, but it wasn’t impossible. “No,” she said after a calculated pause. “...Nothing.”

A shadow passed over Cloud’s face, but he was quick to school his expression into one of neutrality. “Well, we still have a few rooms left on the first floor,” he said as he shined his light on the south door. “Who knows? Maybe Zack is in one of them talking to a ghost, or something.”

“I thought you don’t believe in ghosts,” Aerith teased lightly.

“Fine.” Cloud’s lips quirked into the barest of smiles. “He could be talking to a wall, then.”

Across the south hallway was another room set up as a den. Ripped couches and chairs lay haphazardly on top of what must have once been an ornate rug, though it was rotting and its pattern had long since worn away. Here, Aerith thought that she felt something, a slight pressure of sorts, yet she couldn’t pinpoint it exactly. Once again, it felt as if a veil had been thrown over her eyes, which left her frustrated and exhausted from the strain of trying to understand and communicate.

“Zack?” she called out to the gloom, as loudly as she dared.

Unsurprisingly and worryingly, there was no response.

Cloud checked behind couches and under the tables as if Zack was hiding underneath, but the movement was robotic, and when he turned to her his expression was pinched – taunt, even.

His fingers fidgeted with his flashlight; his foot impatiently tapped the floor. “Not here,” he said simply.

Aerith only pursed her lips and nodded.

The only other room they hadn’t checked yet was the old welcome room, which was situated just to the side of the front doors. One of their cameras blinked red as it streamed footage back to the van, though it was quickly drowned out from Aerith’s flashlight as she peaked inside.

Aerith’s flashlight slid across the walls and behind the table, and Cloud’s flashlight soon joined hers. _He’s not here either,_ she realized, and chewed her inner cheek as anxiety twisted within her. Tifa would have told them if Zack had wandered here, right? She could see all the footage back in the van, after all... but then again, since she wasn’t responding on the radio either...

Aerith sighed. _Everything is a mess,_ she thought, and nearly told Cloud as much when something suddenly brushed against her mind. A faint pressure built between her eyes and she squeezed them shut, trying to understand if this was a spirit or a stress headache, when Cloud suddenly went stiff beside her.

His gaze slid to hers, and she could clearly see the white of his eyes around their natural blue. “Do you feel that?” he murmured.

Aerith pressed her lips together and nodded, once. It felt _heavy,_ as if a window had been closed and the air had suddenly gone stale, still, and muggy. Sounds were muted. The blinking camera suddenly looked dimmer, and even their flashlights suddenly flickered though their batteries were full.

Aerith met Cloud’s gaze, and a look of understanding passed between them.

_Something’_ _s_ _here._

The new presence didn’t feel like the malevolent, violent spirit from before. Instead it felt… smaller, if she had to put a name to it. Smaller and yet edged, as if the soul possessed a wild streak, yet she couldn’t fully place it. Once again, the veil had been thrown over her eyes and she had no choice but to follow it, to chase after the small tug pulled at her senses, and footsteps behind her indicated that Cloud was close behind.

Their flashlights bobbed in the dark as the tiny presence guided Aerith back to the front hall, and then took a hard left towards the back of the manor. Cloud’s footsteps paused on the entranceway however, and it wasn’t long before his quiet voice drifted across the room.

“Maybe we should head back to the van,” he said. “Check on Tifa before we keep looking for Zack, you know.”

But Aerith had a feeling, something that felt like she would lose this small clue forever if she turned back now. “We can after this,” she murmured, taking another step forward. The presence pushed against her again, pulled at her, demanding she continued to walk. There was a _promise_ within it, a promise to answers she suddenly found herself needing, answers such as: _Where’s Zack? What was behind the wall? Why is there so much fear here?_

She had to know.

“You can go back if you want,” she heard herself say, as if from a great distance. “But I – I need to keep going. There’s something else.”

Cloud’s eyes widened a fraction. “You have to…” But then he suddenly exhaled, a sharp hiss of sound, before his footsteps quickly joined hers. “No one should be going anywhere alone right now; it’s probably not safe.”

Aerith flashed him a small grin. “You’re starting to sound like Tifa.”

Cloud only shone his flashlight against the far wall, lighting up a dusty portrait, and huffed his displeasure…

...only for his huff to climb a sharp octave when the soft, high giggle of a child drifted across the floor.

Cloud shifted his flashlight faster than Aerith could blink, wild-eyed and expression pallid. Yet nothing was there; the pale glow of his flashlight lit up the far wall and reflected white off the glass windows and highlighted the cracks spiderwebbing the ancient glass. The floors creaked. The house continued to groan, and the pressure in Aerith’s mind suddenly spiked – spiked as if something was being driven through it.

A melody began to ripple through the manor.

The notes wavered and warped the air as the piano, located in the room behind them, began to play. The song began with a gentle rise and fall, like lungs slowly expanding and contracting with every breath, or maybe even a tide contracting against the shore, before the song suddenly went sharp. Broken notes crashed into the symphony. Flat keys were plucked out of the keyboard and slammed into the ground. The melody was crumbled and crushed, reduced to a pitiful bastardization of something that had once been beautiful.

And it was haunting. It was _haunting_ how the notes lingered in the air, how the warped melody rattled through her ribs and twisted to her core, and she suddenly had the wild urge to run. She wanted to sprint to the door and never look back. Goosebumps peppered her skin and she ran hands along her arms, trying and failing to smooth both them and her frayed nerves.

_Everything is okay,_ she reminded herself as she slowly lifted her head, yet it was difficult to see anything but the front door looming over her. It was hard to make out anything but the pattern etched into its wood and how its grain ran crooked against the walls. _Spirits were people once, and probably just want to communicate._

She released a shaky breath. _Right._ This was an investigation, and they were here to investigate the wild amount of activity this place had been experiencing as of late.

It was time to do their job.

“Cloud?” she said, louder than normal to cut through the broken piano melody. Cloud jerked his head towards her, though it was little more than an instinctual reaction to hearing his name. “Do you have your recorder?”

He nodded once and, without her prompting, reached into his hoodie pocket and pulled it out. It was already turned on, which was something to be grateful for. “Maybe this is Zack’s prank,” he said, but his tone was weak and held no conviction.

Aerith managed a small smile and a nod. “Maybe,” she replied, her voice just as thin, and then made their way to the music room together. The pressure throbbed within her temple. Her eyes darted to the shadows, yet nothing stared at her from the dark; no eyes, no toothy smiles, no strange voices echoing within the wind. Only the strange, haunting melody could be heard echoing through the house.

Yet the moment they entered the music room, the tune went silent. Dead. The last notes drifted off into the haunted space, echoed in the atrium and lingered sour in the air before going silent.

Cloud shone his flashlight on the piano. The piano sat quietly, a thick layer of dust undisturbed on the keys that hadn’t been touched by living hands in years, and his nose wrinkled in distaste. “Ghosts _love_ pianos,” he muttered under his breath.

Aerith, who had also been staring at the piano, glanced at him in confusion. “What?”

“Never mind.” Body language obviously apprehensive, Cloud snuck forward towards the piano, his steps light and barely making a creak in the floorboards. Aerith crept behind him, following his path past the table containing his supplies – where he picked up his K2 meter – and ending in front of the piano. He hovered there for a moment as she joined him, cautiously holding the meter forward.

“Hello?” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. The pressure within her spiked; the K2 meter fluttered. “Are you here with us?”

There was a sharp whine, and then a tiny voice murmured, _“Heeere.”_

Cloud held his breath as the icy whisper fluttered through between them, slipped across the floor, and then settled over the piano. The middle C pressed down on its all violation, and the off-key sound rose from the dusty piano, soft and sharp, before the key lifted back up.

Aerith glanced around the room, yet couldn’t see anything… yet. Cloud, on the other hand, remained stiff and still beside her. His breathing came in shallow gasps. The K2 meter in his hand had flown straight into the red and remained there, the needle wavering yet unmoving, yet he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the piano.

“Shit,” he breathed.

Aerith suddenly felt the presence shift; what had once been a throbbing pressure in her temple drifted further down until it felt like small hands were holding hers and tugging her along, insistent, and she allowed herself to be swept forward. Her fingertips tingled. Need rippled through her in waves, and with a start she realized that the spirit wanted to show her something.

But what?

“Aerith…” Cloud’s tone had a warning to it, a small ask to be careful.

She didn’t respond, only flashed him a small smile – _everything is okay,_ that smile said – before she turned her attention back to the piano. She reached forward with a steady hand and felt the dust on the keys, trailing her fingers against the ivory as she searched and _felt_ for what the spirit was trying to show her.

“ _Heeeeere,_ ” the voice drawled out again, whispering from farther back.

She heard Cloud’s sharp intake behind her, but did not turn around as she reached her hand farther up until it rested on top of the closed lid. The lid felt surprisingly warm to the touch – not cold, as she had been expecting – and she took that as a good sign.

“Here?” she asked.

Warmth pooled through her, and taking that as an affirmative, she moved to the side of the piano and wrapped her fingers underneath the sturdy frame. She gave a quick tug and lifted, fighting the rusty hinges that shrieked their annoyance the entire while, and shone her flashlight inside. Old strings that hadn’t seen the light of day in decades withered before her lighted gaze, but nothing looked out of the ordinary…

Nothing, except a strange glint that shone underneath part of the piano’s frame. _There it is,_ she knew, and reached in with her other hand, working to free the piece of metal wedged in there. Seconds later, she triumphantly removed a small key, and she held it up with a big smile for Cloud to look at.

Cloud only pursed his lips and said nothing.

Aerith glanced around the room, trying and failing to find the spirit that had helped her. “Thank you,” she said sincerely. Warmth once again blossomed within her, and then it was gone – gone with the wind howling outside the windows, with the creaking floorboards, with the walls groaning around her.

“A key?” Cloud’s voice snapped her out of her trance, and she turned to see his characteristic scowl. Hands shoved deep into his hoodie pockets, he added, “Know where it goes?”

Aerith shook her head. “The ghost wanted us to have it though, so it’s probably important…”

She handed it to him, and Cloud inspected the rusty key with narrowed eyes. “We should probably tell Tifa,” he said as he slipped it into his pocket for safekeeping. “I tried reaching out earlier, but she still hasn’t answered…”

A chill descended on the room; a chill and a whisper, one that echoed softly behind her. Cloud frowned at the noise while Aerith glanced over her shoulder, tension suddenly rolling over her in waves. The pressure returned, but not the same as the piano spirit’s presence. Instead this felt _heavy,_ _cold,_ and _wrong._ Wrongness twisted within her and licked against her bruised throat, and a shudder rippled down her spine as the feeling crept deeper into her body, returning as if it had permission to be there.

“Aerith?” Cloud’s voice swam behind her, almost as if he were speaking through a tunnel. “What is it?”

“Cloud…” Aerith glanced at him, wide-eyed, her voice barely above a murmur. “Something else is here.”

* * *

“ _Something else is here.”_

Terror was etched across Aerith’s expression as she quietly spoke, and Cloud’s heart dropped at the sight of it. “Fan-fucking-tastic,” he muttered. He was just about at his wit’s end with these damn... _hallucinations,_ or whatever they were, because _ghosts weren’t real._ They weren’t. There was _always_ a logical reason for paranormal events, _always_ an explanation for the unexplainable, _and yet…_

And yet he was drawing a blank. His usual go-to explanations and reasoning no longer applied, and he suddenly found himself caught between exasperation, exhaustion, and anxiousness.

He lifted his flashlight to where Aerith was staring, and the golden beam wavered in the dark. “What it is this time?” he asked, his voice low and gravely.

“I don’t know,” Aerith murmured, just as a loud creak reverberated through the room. They both jolted, instinctively moving closer to each other in their fear, but the next moment a wonderfully familiar voice shouted out:

“ _Guys?”_ There was a second creak – a groan of rusty hinges, Cloud realized – then, _“Where are you?!”_

The fear that had flushed through Cloud’s veins immediately faded, and he breathed a sigh of relief. “Tifa!” he shouted in reply, uncaring that... _other_ things might hear him. “Music room!”

Aerith shakily laughed beside him. “Thank the gods,” she exhaled, and her lips quirked into a relieved smile. “That scared me.”

It had scared Cloud as well, not that he would ever admit it out loud. Rapid footsteps echoed off the walls and hallway until finally Tifa joined them, her eyes wide and cheeks flushed from her obvious sprint. Her flashlight shook in her hands. So did the van’s keys, which were looped around one of her fingers like a weapon.

“Are you guys okay?” she cried, approaching them quickly. “Oh my god, when I couldn’t hear you two anymore, I thought that something might have happened and…” She suddenly enveloped them both in a tight hug and pulled them in close, her breath an anxious shudder between them. “I was just so _worried…_ ”

Cloud dipped his head into the crook of her shoulder. “Sorry…”

“Are you guys okay?” Tifa abruptly pulled away, her wine-deep eyes wide and bright. “Were you able to find Zack? I was waiting to see if he would answer the radio, but when I couldn’t hear you two anymore, I thought the worst…”

“We’re okay,” Aerith replied with a quick smile and kind eyes. “I promise.”

But Tifa’s eyes only widened further as she focused on a spot just underneath Aerith’s chin. “Aerith, your _neck!_ Are those… Are those _bruises?”_

A shadow flickered across Aerith’s expression, and she idly brushed her fingertips against the dark marks. “Well…”

“What happened?” Tifa’s voice was tight with tension, a sound that matched Cloud’s continued concern on the same injuries. “Are you hurt?”

“It doesn’t hurt,” Aerith promised, but there was something in her tone that had Cloud doubting the truthfulness of that claim. “I promise it doesn’t. I was on the second floor when I encountered _something,”_ she continued, emphasizing the word. “It was so angry… and there’s so much _fear_ here, I just…” She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment and inhaled a deep, calming breath; and when she opened them again, there was a new hardness that hadn’t been there before. “I think we need to find Zack as quickly as possible,” she finished.

“Definitely,” Tifa replied, and Cloud vehemently nodded his agreement.

“Also,” Aerith added quickly, “we should be extra careful about going into that second floor room. I don’t entirely know what type of spirit it is, and until I do…” Her voice trailed off.

“We’ll be careful,” Cloud promised, because he knew _exactly_ what room Aerith was referring to. Even after all these years, he could still picture it in his mind’s eye: the stone wall, the cluttered tables and stacks of boxes, the smell of mold and iron, and the _whispering…_

He shook his head, trying and failing to displace the image. “So, Tifa,” he said, trying to change the subject, “what happened to you? We couldn’t hear you on the radio.”

Tifa sighed. “I think it was some kind of interference. You guys were really breaking up, and then suddenly the radios cut out altogether.” Her gaze darted to the piano, which had Cloud wondering if she had seen something hovering around it earlier; any paranormal activity that they couldn’t see might have shown up on the cameras, after all. “So… I might have called in Group B, to help us out. We need backup.”

“I agree. Good call, leader,” Cloud assured with a smile; it was a tense smile, his lips felt cracked and thin, but it was a smile all the same. Shifting his weight to his other foot, he asked, “So… what’s the plan?”

Tifa sharply exhaled, and replied, “Well, first we need to find Zack. He’s our first priority. And as soon as we find him, we should wait at the van until Group B arrives. They should be here in…” She glanced at her watch, “... thirty to forty minutes, give or take.”

“Perfect,” Aerith chimed in with a stiff nod. “That’ll give us plenty of time to search.”

“And we’ll find him.” Cloud shifted his flashlight towards the door, as if Zack was going to step through at any moment, grinning and ready to tease him some more. What he would give for even that annoying interaction... “We will… I know it.”

“So…” Tifa managed a small, pale smile. “Let’s start with a plan. Where have you guys searched?”

“We swept the entire first floor,” Cloud told her. “No sign of him.”

“Then we’ll head up and search the second.” Tifa’s gaze trailed towards the door, and her expression darkened a fraction. Cloud wondered if she had seen what happened to Aerith. “Let’s go.”

After sharing tense looks, the team of three slowly made their way back towards the steps and towards the second floor. Despite having all three of their flashlights scouring the walls and illuminating golden circles against the rotting carpet, the second floor didn’t seem any brighter than before. In fact, it almost looked _darker_ despite the light, almost as if someone had shut the curtains against the moonlit-stricken windows even though they were all open and silvery light was attempting to shine through.

Cloud made a face as they all reached the landing at the top of the stairs. “We should go left,” he said before Tifa could get a word in.

“Left?”

“How come?” Aerith added, giving him an odd look complete with an inquiring head tilt.

How could he explain it without giving into childhood nightmares? How could he tell them that he _couldn’t_ go to that room on the right that they had chosen together to avoid for now, and that he would rather go _anywhere_ than somewhere near that cluttered, suffocating room that was full of dust, whispers, and horrible memories?

“Just have a feeling,” he eventually settled on, and his expression dared anyone to contradict him.

Tifa pursed her lips, and there was something in her eyes – _understanding_ , though Cloud didn’t know why; she didn’t know what had happened to him back then. “All right,” she said after a long, pregnant pause. “We’ll go left. To the greenhouse, then?”

Cloud managed a small nod. “That sounds good.”

“It’ll be easy to look there -” Aerith began, but then her voice trailed off. Without warning she glanced over her shoulder back the way they would _not_ be going, her eyes wide and lips parting in a small _o._

Tifa immediately went stiff in obvious fright. “Aerith?” she whispered as her eyes darted around, as if she was afraid the walls were listening. Cloud immediately took a ready stance, shifting his feet so that they would be ready to pull him and whomever else he grabbed down the stairs in a dash to _not find out what was in that room_.

Aerith suddenly jolted, caught off guard, before she mentally returned to them and flashed Tifa an apologetic smile. “Sorry… what?”

“You… You okay?” Tifa’s hands fidgeted around her flashlight as she clearly fought between shining the light towards whatever had distracted Aerith and keeping it firmly on the ground at her feet. Cloud’s nerves got the better of him and he shined his flashlight that way, the soft, golden beam revealing a normal, empty hallway. Tifa continued, “You kind of went still…”

“Ah, sorry.” Aerith gave a breathy laugh, almost as if she was trying to catch her breath. “I just thought I heard something -” Tifa went pale, “- but it’s nothing, I promise. Let’s just keep going.”

“O – Okay.” Tifa made a face, as if she didn’t quite believe her, but resolutely turned around and continued leading the team towards the greenhouse – _and away from the room I won’t be going in,_ Cloud sighed internally. He hovered at her side as they approached the greenhouse, looking over his shoulder towards the half-opened door at the other end of the hall while goosebumps pricked at his arms.

There was a new chill to the air now, the sort that weighed heavily upon him, and the same kind that stole breath from his lungs and made it difficult to breathe. His hands unconsciously drifted to his neck as he tried to loosen his hoodie’s collar even though the soft fabric didn’t touch his throat.

Tifa shone her flashlight into the room, her expression still pale and her eyes hard with determination. The small effort of scanning the room revealed physical relief in the way her shoulders sagged when nothing unnatural peered back into the golden glow of her flashlight. “It doesn’t look like he’s here,” she murmured as she glanced back at Cloud, eyebrows knit in worry. “Should we check the bedroom…?” Suddenly her eyes widened as she stared at the space behind him. “Wait, where’s Aerith?”

Cloud frowned and glanced over his shoulder. “What do you -” he began, only to pause when he realized that Aerith’s comforting presence was indeed no longer standing beside him. In fact, she wasn’t anywhere to be seen at all; not in the greenhouse and, after a quick, extensive search, she was not in the hallway or the bedroom across from the greenhouse either.

“Oh no,” Tifa was murmuring beside him, her voice a twisted mess that reflected physically too. She was chewing a nail, a nervous habit he had only seen from her when they were younger. “Not Aerith too. Oh no. Please, _no_.”

Cloud, entirely uncertain of what to do, swallowed thickly and placed a gentle hand on her arm. It was a strange gesture on his part, but she abruptly glanced up at him, her ruby eyes dark and watery. “She couldn’t have gotten far,” he reassured her. “We’ll find -”

He was cut off by a scream; a bone-chilling, ear-splitting scream that ripped through the manor and into their eardrums. Cloud and Tifa glanced at each other, the whites of their eyes visible in the pale moonlight as realization dawned on them both like a horror-filled nightmare. That scream belonged to one person, and one person only:

_Aerith._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the plot thickens!
> 
> Tbh, I've always wanted to investigate a real haunted house... but let's be real. I'd spend the first half sobbing and the second half wishing I was home lol.
> 
> Next chapter will come out on **Halloween, October 31st!** I am so excited you guys.
> 
> 🧡 Stay spooky 🧡


	3. The Basement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **RandomSmil3z** : Happy Halloween! I hope you enjoy the third chapter of the story - it's an extra long one this time 🧡
> 
> Silver-doe287: Happy Halloween, everybody! Have a wonderful, extra long chapter full of spookiness, a touch of horror, delicious evil, and poor, poor Cloud. Enjoy!!

When the second van squealed to a halt next to the first, a stream of heavy bass rattled the mirrors, pelted the windows, and shook the ivory frame. The thrumming beat snuck out between the cracks in the doors and rumbled across the dead grass, which was highlighted gold by the brilliant headlights. It also crept into the tires, which were still warm from the long drive to the manor. It pounded the dry earth and reverberated up through the stars themselves.

But then one of the side doors slid open, and the screeching tunes came to an abrupt halt.

“Oh come on!” Barret complained, palms stopping midair from his solo drumming on the steering wheel. “It was just getting to the good part!”

“You need to join the current century,” Yuffie teased as she jumped out from the van and onto the grass. Around her neck was a rainbow strap which was connected to a beefy camera, and she quickly adjusted it as she glanced around the property. “So this is the place, huh? It’s _waaay_ bigger than what I thought it would be! And look at the _architecture._ ” She flashed a quick photo of the manor’s dilapidated exterior. “Neoclassical, maybe? Or maybe even gothic...”

A sigh echoed from somewhere behind her. “It’s tudor style architecture,” Vincent deadpanned as he disembarked from the van behind her. He pulled a cigarette lighter and bundle of sage out of his pocket and quietly added, “You can tell from the unique lumber decor.” He proceeded to light up the sage bundle as if it was a firework on New Years. It smoked in his hand and lit up his half-hidden crimson gaze.

“Hey Vin,” Cid called as he slid out from the passenger’s seat, “bring that lighter here.” But he didn’t wait for Vincent to bring it over as requested; instead, he reached out his open window and, after plucking the lighter from Vincent’s outstretched hand, used it to light the waiting cigarette between his lips. After tossing it back, he took a long drag and stared suspiciously at the manor.

Something felt… _off._ Maybe it was the angle of the moon shining down on the old building; how its light seemed too thin, too pale, too _sickly_ to come from the stars. Or maybe it was the manor itself, how ancient wood groaned with the wind and cracked windows fragmented the moonlight.

“Those things’ll kill you, old man,” Yuffie scoffed with a loud sniff. Without turning around, she shook her head and lifted the camera up for another shot. “Nasty.”

Cid took another long drag. “Hasn’t killed me yet,” he replied with a long, smoky exhale and then a long drag of his earl grey tea. The bitter caffeine did little to help wake him up however, and he let out a low curse. “Well, let’s go see what the hell is going on here. Can’t believe that I hired y’all to do the overnight investigations so I don’t have to. Waste of money,” he spat with a heavy, annoyed sigh.

“Excuse me?” Barret asked indignantly as he walked around the van to join them. “I ain’t doing this for the money.”

“I am!” Yuffie raised a hand as she turned around to face them, a mischievous grin on her face. “College is expensive, you know. But this beats taking a final _any_ day!”

Vincent, who had just spent a few minutes carefully smudging around their van, was now standing cautiously in front of Tifa’s vehicle. The lights seemed to all be on, but no one appeared to be inside - a fact confirmed when he knocked on the back door and no one answered.

Vincent turned around and shrugged. “They must be inside,” he said simply as he blew out the smoking sage.

Yuffie’s expression lit up. “Let’s go take a look at the big, scary house,” she whispered gleefully, bouncing on her toes, altogether far too eager to witness a proper haunting.

Cid huffed again, and after drawing one final pull out of the end of his cigarette, he discarded it to the ground and snuffed out the remaining light with his foot. “Those idiots are going to have some explaining to do,” he growled as he plucked out the half-finished tea from its cupholder in the van and slammed the door behind him, only to turn and see the other three staring at him. “What?” he demanded.

Vincent reached into the back of the van and pulled out an empty trash can. He then held it out without a single word. Cid stared at it for a moment before he realized what the quiet man was hinting at.

“For crying out loud...!” He plucked the discarded cigarette of the floor and discarded it in the held out can. Now that pointless task was finished, with a grunt of annoyance Cid led the entourage of misfits towards the manor. Yuffie giggled behind him, and there was a loud _slap_ as she high-fived Vincent. Cid only sighed.

The first thing he noticed when he opened the old doors was the chill. It was _cold,_ and not just the normal high-altitude autumn temperatures that came naturally with the night. This was something else, something far deeper and sharper, and he found himself rubbing his arms as he pushed his way through the front door.

“So this is the place,” Barret said. His voice, already low and deep, seemed unnaturally booming in the cavernous front hall. A chandelier groaned on its hinges above their heads, and the old windows rattled and shook with the wind. Cid lifted his head and thought, _A storm must be approaching,_ just as Barret huffed and continued, “Place looks a bit different from the pictures online.”

“No kidding,” Yuffie replied, voice awestruck as she snapped a photo of the upstairs landing. The room momentarily lit up with a white flash, only to fade back into darkness as she eagerly checked the camera’s screen. “I mean, when Tifa called, she _had_ mentioned the place was a bit rundown, but this is kinda… a lot.”

“A _lot_ is a word for it,” Cid agreed uncertainly as he swept his gaze across the second floor railing, because when Tifa had called for backup, she hadn’t just mentioned that the place was falling apart; she had also mentioned that they couldn’t contact Zack and her radios in the van weren’t working anymore.

There couldbe logical explanations for all of that, of course. It was no secret that their equipment was getting old and was probably faulty, but the chances of _all_ the radios breaking at the same time had fairly low probability. That certainly didn’t mean that it was the work of vengeful spirits, however. In investigations such as these, it was always better to first look for the logical explanation, rule out what had concrete evidence, and then deal with whatever remained. That’s the way Cid had always operated, and since that always seemed to work out for him quite well, he made sure his team did the same thing.

With a death grip on the now-empty cup, he sure hoped that process would continue here.

“So.” Vincent’s low, even tone snapped Cid out of his thoughts. “Are we splitting up?”

“Nope,” Cid answered easily. “Not in anything less than pairs after what Tifa mentioned. Speaking of though,” he added after half a thought, “where the _hell_ are -”

An interrupting thud on the second floor had the team glancing upwards at the upstairs landing, and then Tifa’s frantic face suddenly popped into view, as if she had been summoned by Cid’s question. “Guys?” she called out nervously as she peered through the darkness towards them. “Is that - oh thank the gods it is, for a second there I thought...” She seemed to catch herself and she shook her head quickly, leaving Cid frowning at what she hadn’t said.

“They’re here?” came a second, tight voice - Cloud’s - and then the young man himself appeared next to Tifa. Even from his spot on the first floor and in the dim light only illuminated by moonlight and various flashlights towards him, Cid could see spiderwebs draped in Cloud’s mused hair and what strangely looked like soot stains darkening his shoulders and smudging his cheeks. His expression was pale, as was Tifa’s, and there were tired bruises beneath both their eyes.

Cid expression tightened a fraction. They both looked like they’d been through hell.

“Hey, guys!” Yuffie called from beside him. Letting the camera dangle from its strap around her neck, she threw her hands into the air and waved, disturbing both the dusty air and silky cobwebs. “Thought we’d join the party, too!”

Tifa attempted to smile at the cheery disposition, but it slipped off her face just as quickly as it appeared. Cloud outright grimaced.

“What happened?” Barret inquired with a quick, sturdy step towards the stairs. The man’s eyes were narrow with concern as he took in their faces. “What’s going on?”

“And where’s Aerith?” Vincent added in his low voice. Cid narrowed his eyes, also noting the lack of presence by the team psychic… but then Tifa flinched at the latter question, and that was all the answer Cid needed. “...Damn,” he murmured under his breath. “She and Fair are both missing now?”

Tifa took a deep breath, trying and failing to calm her voice. “I… It just happened, like fifteen minutes ago, and we’ve been searching but we can’t find them… and I -”

She cut off when Cloud placed a hand on her shoulder. He was biting his lip. “We’re having some trouble,” he explained simply as he glanced down at them. “Weird shit is going on.” From the light of the flashlight shining just to the right of his face, Cid studied his blue eyes, which were dark from the shadows. The sickly moonlight backlit his hair into a halo of silver.

“Sounds like it,” Cid grunted with a sharp exhale. “How about you all head down and we can regroup at the van. Both Zack and Aerith have to still be on the property, so we’ll find them eventually.”

“And we’ll find them quicker with a plan,” Vincent added.

“Hell yeah!” Barret agreed heartily with a brandished fist.

Yuffie enthusiastically nodded. “And then after we find them and _kill_ the ghost,” she added with a flourish and an excited grin, “we can go for pizza!”

“Yuffie…” Barret shook his head as Tifa and Cloud wearily made their way down the steps. “You can’t kill ghosts. They’re already dead.”

“But you can banish them,” Vincent cut in. He glanced at Barret, and his scarlet eyes seemed a lighter shade despite the dark room. “For a banishing spell, all you need is a white candle, a black candle, a mirror, and perhaps some incense -”

Cid loudly sighed, having enough of the pointless conversation. “We got it, Vincent. You get some shit, say some shit, and then _voila._ ”

“It’s a delicate art,” Vincent replied haughtily, his voice as even and unruffled as ever. “It requires years of practice.”

“We’ve heard,” Cid groaned with an exaggerated eye roll. “Many times, in fact.”

When Tifa and Cloud joined them, Cid scrutinized their appearances at close range. If he thought that they’d looked like hell from afar, they seemed to be far worse for wear up close. Dust coated their clothes. Cloud looked particularly pale, which was a feat considering his usually fair skin, and he held himself in a tense position as if he would sprint from the building at a moment’s notice. Yet it was obvious that he was keeping himself together for Tifa, who’s shoulders were slumped and her expression was tight with worry. Her black tights had a long rip scoring her thigh, but she hardly seemed to notice.

“So.” Tifa glanced up at him and managed a small, thin smile, ever trying to be the leader. “Regroup?”

Cid sighed, disgruntled. “Yeah. Let’s go.” He led the entire group, sans two important members, back out the doors and towards the vans outside.

Cid’s van was the larger of the two. It had been built out of an old, repurposed utility vehicle, and that meant that there was plenty of room for equipment and storage. He slid open the side door of the van and took a quick gander inside. Monitors were bolted onto the walls, weather-proof flooring laid a solid foundation for the cases of equipment, and two generators currently stowed in their transporting locations waited welcomingly. Cid unhooked one of the generators and Barret wordlessly began to help. Together, they heaved the generator down and onto the damp grass below. Once that was done, Cid hefted a sigh and reached back into the van to grab the waiting extension cord. He specifically had a Keurig installed in the corner for the long nights like this, though he mostly used it for hot water to make his various teas - or black coffee, depending on his mood.

Tonight was a black coffee sort of night, and after kicking the generator to life he grabbed his waiting mug and unceremoniously dumped its day-old contents on the ground. “What do you two want?” he asked the Nibelheim natives as he stuck his mug back into the Keurig.

Dry grass crumpled beneath Tifa’s boots as she shifted her weight. “Um, no thank you, it’s -”

“I _asked,_ ” Cid repeated, a little louder now, “what you _want_. And don’t make me ask you again, you hear?”

“Um.” Tifa seemed taken aback. “Um, just… coffee, please.”

Cid grunted his acknowledgement. “Cream? Sugar?”

“Uh, both. Please.”

“Cloud?”

He could hear Cloud clear his throat. “Coffee,” the younger man replied in a chipped, brittle tone. “Black.”

“ _Bullshit_.” Cid reached forward and grabbed two creamers and sugars for Cloud, because he knew that boy well enough to know when he was just being a little _shit_ and just trying to act tough. And right now that’s exactly what he was trying to do. “Don’t be a wuss and just tell me what ya want the _first_ time so we can skip this dance, ya here?”

Cloud straightened up. “I’m not being a wuss.”

“Yeah?” Cid glanced over his shoulder. “So then you _want_ your coffee black and bitter?”

Yuffie answered for him. “Definitely not!” she called, lifting her head from her camera’s screen. “Actually I saw on Tifa’s media page that they all went for coffee before the investigation, and in the corner you can see what Cloud ordered! It was a vanilla white mocha with whipped cream on top!”

“ _Yuffie!”_ Cloud looked utterly betrayed. “No, that’s not -”

Barret’s booming laugh echoed across the abandoned property, and sounded stunningly out of place. “Too late!” he said. “The secret’s out!”

“Can we focus?” Cloud’s expression, basked in the warm glow of the van, seemed a bit pink. “Our _teammates_ are missing, and -”

“And tell me about that,” Cid cut in. The coffee machine hissed and gurgled as it began to spit out black coffee; satisfied, he slowly turned around. “What the hell happened, huh?”

Tifa slowly exhaled. “I… don’t even know where to start,” she admitted.

But Cloud did. “The piano,” he began lowly, and his gaze flicked towards the floor. “Zack heard something at the piano, and then… and then weird shit started happening, so we got out of there. I went to the car to get a new camera, and when I came back, Zack wasn’t there.”

“I also couldn’t get in touch with him over the radio,” Tifa added. A shadow flickered across her expression. “Maybe if I tried harder, I -”

Cid interrupted her, because time was of the essence. “And then what happened?” he asked. “After you realized Zack wasn’t there?”

Cloud’s expression darkened, though he mumbled a brief _thank you_ when Cid passed him his coffee. Cream swirled cheerfully in the tan beverage that was definitely not a black coffee. “Well… I’m not sure how much Tifa told you over your call,” he finally continued. “I looked around for Zack, but couldn’t find him. I couldn’t hear Tifa after a while, either,” he added with a small nod towards Tifa, who managed a shaky smile. “Aerith was on the second floor -”

“The second floor by herself?” Cid cut in as he handed Tifa’s coffee to her.

Tifa accepted the cup with a wince. “She… insisted,” she said eventually. “She said that there was something in the mansion that she wanted to investigate, and…”

“And it didn’t last,” Cloud cut in, shooting Cid a look. He also shuffled a bit closer to Tifa, as if to block her from Cid’s questions. “Aerith and I were talking over the radio - we could communicate for some reason, but not with the van - and we agreed to sweep the ground floor together.”

“But before she could get to him, she was attacked,” Tifa added, her voice little more than a whisper.

The effect on the group was immediate. Barret’s expression shifted into one of shock. Vincent blinked, the extent of his visible surprise. Yuffie jumped up and loudly cussed. Cid frowned.

“Attacked? Like, by an entity?” Yuffie managed after a moment. When both Tifa and Cloud cringed and nodded, she continued more fervently, “How bad was it? Like, _bad_ bad? Did it leave any marks?”

“...Bruises,” Cloud admitted with a grimace, which had the van going silent and tense once again. “Around her neck.”

“Shiva’s tits,” Cid muttered. The rest of the group made similar noises of disbelief.

Tifa took a small sip of her coffee. “I saw them when I went back into the manor to find everyone. And then when Cloud, Aerith, and I went to the second floor… she screamed and vanished.”

Cid arched an eyebrow. “Just like that?”

Cloud’s grip tightened on his coffee. “Just like that,” he echoed. “We were looking for her when you guys showed up.”

Silence, made heavier by the dark night and the howling wind as the rainless storm barrelled down on the van. Crickets chirped. The dead, dry grass rustled with the breeze.

Then Barret whistled, and the tension snapped. “Damn,” he said. “No wonder you guys called for backup.”

Cid leaned forward as he nursed his own coffee. “Well, let’s go over the facts,” he began after a long sip. “What do we know? Maybe you should have called an exorcist too,” he added, only half joking.

“We know the history of the building,” Cloud pointed out. Color continued to flush his cheeks, exposing his concern, and there was a light in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. “Burke, the caretaker of the property, walked Zack and me through it while we did some basic readings. We didn’t find anything then, but Burke did mention that this place was an asylum after Shinra himself passed away.”

Yuffie’s expression suddenly lit up. “Oh man oh man oh man, but did he tell you _why_ it became an asylum, or _why_ the asylum was abandoned?” And when both Tifa and Cloud shot her a curious look, she continued, “It’s because first of all, the Shinra guy kind of started going crazy. He kept complaining about noises in the walls and hearing people talking. Even back then this place had a reputation for being _haunted_.”

“I remember that,” Tifa murmured. “As kids, we’d sometimes come out here to maybe see a ghost… just kids’ games, you know?”

“But anyway, when the guy died,” Yuffie continued in a hushed, excited voice, “they couldn’t get anyone else to live here, so they donated this place to the city, which then turned it into an asylum to fill the need for more mental health care.”

Barret loudly huffed and kicked the ground as he added onto the story. “But then people started to disappear, one by one. And the institute tried to cover it up. It didn’t work, and it’s sat abandoned ever since.”

“All right, enough with the ghost stories,” Cid cut in with a groan of annoyance. “Let’s go find our team.”

* * *

Cloud was _not_ enjoying being back in the manor again after the small bout of relief his being outside had provided. The coffee he had just finished spun his nerves into twisted, frayed ends that kept him alert and on edge. His hands were jittery. Every shadow was a threat, every blinking camera light was an eye squinting at him in the dark, and his heart stuttered and stammered behind his ribs.

“Hey Cloud,” Barret asked, “what’re you thinking about?” His voice, normally loud and carrying, was actually a bit muted for once.

Cloud adjusted the grip on his K2 meter and sighed. “I’m just hoping we can find them, finish the investigation, and get the hell out of here,” he admitted as he stared at the green, unimpressive light from the unimpressive paranormal activity. “Zack can be an annoying ass sometimes, but… well, you know.”

Barret chuckled as he scanned his flashlight around the library. “I get it,” he replied. “Don’t have to say nothin’ more.”

Cloud managed a thin smile in reply. It was an unspoken agreement on the significance of friendship in a military unit, and out of all people to get paired off with during such a concerning time, he was secretly glad it was with his veteran mentor.

They continued to scan the library, and his flashlight trailed over dusty books, old tables, and broken chairs. It had been decided that, as Zack and Aerith didn’t seem to be answering the radio, they would methodically go through each of the manor’s rooms and look for any traces of their disappearance. He and Barret were charged with the library, while Vincent and Yuffie were in the greenhouse. Cid and Tifa, meanwhile, were confirming that Zack and Aerith weren’t somewhere on the first floor. Once they finished, then they would sweep the entire second floor once more… including the room where Aerith had been attacked…the room Cloud didn’t want to go inside.

“What’s this?” Barret’s flashlight beam had fallen on a heavy, black safe - the same one that Burke had mentioned that there could be money or some kind of treasure inside, which had Cloud stepping closer. Years of evidence showing people trying to break into the vault made themselves known in grooves, scratches, and shiny metal where the dull paint had been stripped bare from exertion. The lock on the safe was a number combination. Cloud lifted a hand up and tried to jostle the number pad, finding success as it slid to the right and revealed a single, unblemished keyhole.

His eyes widened a fraction. _What a second._ Pocketing the K2 meter, he rummaged around in his hoodie pockets until he found what he was looking for, and then showed Barret the single old key Aerith had found in the piano downstairs.

Barret’s gaze narrowed. “You don’t think…”

One corner of Cloud’s lips lifted in a smirk, and without another word he inserted the key into the hole and gave it a single, strong twist. The results were instantaneous: an interior mechanism groaned as it shifted for the first time in who knew how many years, and a loud _tick_ accompanied it. Cloud swallowed, glanced back at Barret, and turned the old handle with a hard shove.

The door groaned open, and inside was a cacophony of various items: yellowing papers, coffee-stained registries, a cloudy watch with the needles frozen in time. Barret reached inside and picked out some papers at random, scanning them with his flashlight, while Cloud reached up to flick on the headlamp he had grabbed from Cid’s van. “Anything good?” Cloud asked nonchalantly as he sifted through the rest of the papers. On his end, he only came across financial records and stock ledgers - no money seemed to be hidden in the pile, and disappointment trickled through him despite his knowing full well that taking money from an abandoned asylum would still be considered theft.

Barret only sighed. “Nah, just some old blueprints. Although… wait, Cloud, come take a look at this.” He held a blueprint up for Cloud to inspect, and their two flashlights - Barret’s handheld, and Cloud’s headlamp - warmed the faded blue paper to a sea glass shade. Cloud could easily make out the room they were in, as well as the greenhouse and stairs descending to the first floor, but…

“What about it?” Cloud asked in confusion. “It looks normal to me.”

“Look here.” Barret traced the faded lines of the second floor hallway before his fingertip rested on the room opposite of theirs. It was _the_ room - the room with the hands that had attacked Aerith, the room with all of the whispering, the room that he had wanted to forget - and Cloud folded his hands across his chest, as if the single action provided a barrier between him and the world.

“So?”

Barret shot him a long look. “ _So_ this wall isn’t just a wall,” he enunciated. “Use your eyes.”

Cloud scowled at him, but dutifully returned his attention to the diagram of the room. He could picture it in his mind’s eye; the sharp corners, the small space, the way the curved wall had seemed to press in on him...

… except now that he was paying attention, there seemed to be a hollow space behind the curved wall. “What’s that?” He gestured vaguely to the space behind the wall. “Are those...stairs?”

“I think so,” Barret replied excitedly, and began flipping through the blueprints. “I think it’s a secret tunnel. And look -” his flashlight and shifting paused on another level of the house, one that had Cloud’s palms sweaty in nervousness. “It leads to the basement.”

A shiver rippled up Cloud’s spine. _Of course it had to be a basement_ , he inwardly groaned. _It couldn’t be a garden or something more pleasant._

“ _And,_ ” Barret triumphantly finished, “I bet that’s where Zack and Aerith are.” He stood up, blueprints still clenched in his large fist, and swung his flashlight towards the library door. “We have to check it out!”

Cloud blanched. “Um…” He wanted to find Zack and Aerith, he really did. But to go back into that _room_ again, he… he needed more time to prepare, more time to get a grip and compose himself, and then just deal with whatever came - except there wasn’t any more time, was there? Zack and Aerith would have charged in the newly discovered basement, no questions asked, to save him.

And he needed to return the favor.

“S - Sure,” he managed to grind out. “Let’s tell the others and -”

A distant shriek rattled the windows and chilled the air. He jerked his head up at the young, panicked voice, and knew that it could only belong to one person:

“Yuffie?” he breathed, just as Barret cussed and began running out of the door. Cloud got up and followed close behind, his flashlight bobbing with every stride, his throat tightening.

_Not again._

“She was with Vincent, right?” Barret asked over his shoulder. Cloud nodded, his headlamp jerking with the movement, just as they skidded into the greenhouse next door.

Except the two expected teammates were no longer there. Only plants resided in the cold room, and their tangled vines and thorny branches crawled up the foggy windows and moss-stained walls in a desperate bid for daylight. Roots crawled out from underneath too-small pots, their pale forms thick and tapered to fine points. Spiderwebs formed pale curtains that stretched across the ceiling. The moon stared at them, the silver eye foggy and unblinking through the misty glass of the atrium windows.

Footsteps suddenly thundered behind them, and Cloud spun around so quickly that he nearly kinked his neck and lost his footing. He stuck his head out the door to see in relief that it was only Cid flying up the stairs two at a time, with Tifa hot on his heels.

“The camera!” Cid snapped.

Cloud nodded and went to grab the tripod from where it was pointed toward the cold spot Zack had discovered earlier, but Barret was faster. The larger man squinted at it with a practiced eye and Cloud peered over his thick arms, trying to catch a glimpse.

 _No signs of tampering,_ he thought with a frown. _And it looks like it’s still live streaming back to the van…_

“Well?” Tifa stepped up behind him, and it wasn’t long before Cloud felt her place a steadying hand against his back. He unconsciously leaned into the gentle touch as she continued, “Did you see anything? How’s the camera?”

“Camera is fine,” he replied. He talked low, as not to interfere with Cid as he called for Yuffie and Vincent over the radio. Static punctuated every word as he continued, “No sign of tampering.”

“That’s good.” Tifa sucked in breath, and that’s when Cloud noticed that her hand was lightly trembling against his back, that her fingers were curled and her nails were digging into the soft fabric of his hoodie.

“Hey.” He managed a thin smile. “We’ll find them, okay?”

Tifa blinked at his gentle tone, but then managed a small smile of her own. “Right.”

“Yuffie?” Cid’s sharp voice cut through their private conversation, and Cloud turned to see Cid holding up his radio. “Where are ya, you little punk?” he continued to call. “I don’t got time for this!”

Barret stood nearby, his hands - organic and prosthetic - clenched into tight fists at his side. “Not answering, huh?”

Tifa thickly swallowed and glanced at Cloud, who pursed his lips in response. He paused for a moment. “Do you hear that?” He asked. Everybody else fell silent. For a brief moment he wondered if he’d been imagining things, but there it was - a gentle, steady stream of static aside from Cid’s. Cloud narrowed his eyes and crouched so he could peer a bit more easily underneath the tangles of leaves and roots and furniture. There, in front of him, was a radio. He pulled it out from underneath a chair, showing his teammates his discovery.

“That’s Vincent’s radio,” Tifa showed with a pointed finger at the obvious initials.

“The basement,” Barret suddenly said, turning his head to meet Cloud’s eyes as he sought agreement. “They must be in the basement. Cloud and I found some blueprints, see?” He unfurled the blueprints, which he had unwittingly crumpled in his clenched fists. “There’s some stairs behind the wall in the room over here…”

Cid turned off his radio and grabbed Vincent’s from Cloud’s fingers with a harsh sigh. “Which room?”

Tifa, who had leaned over to get a better look, suddenly widened her eyes. “Wait. That’s the room where Aerith…”

“Where Aerith was attacked,” Cloud finished with a grimace. “Yeah.”

Cid flicked his steely, blue-eyed gaze to Tifa. “So you’re sayin’ that we need to prepare,” he said slowly.

Tifa bit her lip and nodded, once. “That would be for the best.”

“I agree,” Cloud added, when Barret’s expression wavered. “Whatever is in there is… dangerous. We should stock up.”

“Never thought I’d hear that from you,” Cid scoffed.

Cloud leveled him with a glare. “I’m not saying it’s a ghost. It could be a person. Maybe this place isn’t as abandoned as we thought. But of course,” he quickly added when Tifa paled, “Aerith had said that it was a spirit, so…”

“So we should be prepared,” Barret echoed, his frown deep and voice low.

“Just… Just in case,” Tifa stammered. She wrung her hands in front of her, and her wine-dark eyes flicked back and forth between them and the door. “And the greenhouse camera is working, right? Maybe we can view the footage back at the van too, and see what really happened.”

Cid hummed. “That’s an idea,” he said after a lengthy pause. “But we should all stick together and go take a look. I’ve had enough of this disappearing bullshit for one lifetime.”

“I’ll agree to that,” Barret grumbled. “Besides, I gotta check up on the babysitter I got for Marlene. Tell her that I may be gettin’ home later than planned.”

With that they began to head back out of the manor, but Cloud trailed behind the rest of the team, and he cautiously peered back towards the dark abyss they left behind.

Going back to the van was a _great_ plan. They could stock up on cleansing materials, and maybe even dip into the blessed metal and spirit oil that Tifa kept stored in the trunk. And that wasn’t all; he had a few defensive weapons around that could help, just in case this entire mess wasn’t because of something paranormal. Wasn’t it better to be prepared? Wasn’t it better to be well-equipped for whatever may happen?

As he followed behind, something had Cloud pausing. He had followed the others to the top of the stairs, but his strides faltered and eventually stopped entirely as he turned to the very room on the other end of the hall. The door creaked open invitingly, and yet he did not shy away from the place that usually chilled him to his core; instead he stared in wonder at the empty chasm behind the doorway, strangely enthralled with the little flickering shadows he thought he could make out in the dark.

 _I need to find Zack and Aerith._ The thought slipped across his mind, and he found himself slowly walking down the hall. _I need to find Yuffie and Vincent._

Cloud blinked, and then he was suddenly inside the very room he had been hell-bent on staying out of.

And yet… he didn’t care. He turned his head, his headlamp lighting up the floor, and slipped into utter apathy. The icy cold air didn’t cause goosebumps to prick his arms. He ignored the heavy scent of mold and mildew. His gaze slid over tables and long marks scratched into the walls – marks that he recognized immediately, marks that he knew came from fingernails clawing out their terror – and nothing stirred inside of him.

So he took a step forward. The far wall curved away from him, the same wall that would have filled him with dread not even a minute ago, but it didn’t look so scary now. In fact, underneath the warm glow of his headlamp, it simply looked _boring_. Colorless wallpaper had peeled to reveal the original brick beneath. The strange stains weren’t all that strange. The unnatural scratches and scrapes seemed plain. Even the wall’s angle, cut in stark contrast to the rest of the room, wasn’t so confusing or menacing any longer. It was… _just a wall._

He took a second step, and then he was standing directly in front of it, close enough that the wide beam of his headlamp became a small halo against its surface. He cocked his head slightly as something fluttered within him; contentedness, perhaps? It was insistent; it pulled and tugged at everything he was, and he felt his eyes grow heavy. It was as if he was _meant_ to be here – that this is where he _belonged_ , and he reached out a hand and pushed it flat against the wall’s surface, splaying his fingers against the flaking paper as wide as he could. Warmth pulsed beneath his fingertips. His headlight began to flicker on and off. _This isn’t so bad,_ he thought hazily, as he lost himself in the slow strobe of darkness.

So he did not react when he heard soft whispering coming from the wall beneath him. He did not flinch at the dry, hoarse rasp he recognized from a distant memory. He did not jump when his headlight went dark, and he did not shiver when he leaned forward to press an ear against the coarse wall, trying and failing to understand what was being said. If only he could get a little closer…!

“ _CLOUD!”_

A sharp noise passed through Cloud’s consciousness but it sounded distant, muted even, and was easy to ignore. He was so close to understanding what it was saying -

Without warning, an unbelievably strong force latched onto his arm and _pulled_ , and he was abruptly torn away from the wall. Something in his mind tore with it; it twisted and ripped inside his head, a steady tearing that had pain slicing across his mind with scalpel-like precision.

And then something snapped. He saw white; someone cried out, as if from far away, and he was dimly aware of hands pressing against his head.

But then he realized that it was _his_ hands, that it was _his_ cry he had heard, and then he recognized that there were a second pair of hands gripping his shoulders. The hands were small, the fingers long and slender, and their warmth chased away the cold that had engulfed him.

“Cloud?” A familiar voice shouted his name, and Cloud squeezed his eyes shut against the ringing in his ears. “Can you hear me, Cloud? Are you okay? What were you _doing_?!”

“T-Tifa?” he stuttered. The pain subsided, the ringing faded, and he gradually eased his eyes open and met her worried, wine-colored ones. Her flashlight was shining onto his chest. “What…. What’re you doing?”

“What am I - what are _you_ doing?” she cried. Her fingers dug into his shoulders, as if she was afraid that he would disappear. “We decided not to come in here, remember? What were you listening to? You… You looked…” she trailed off, biting her lip.

Cloud looked around himself in confusion. Where was… _oh._ _OH._ He leapt away from the wall, dragging Tifa along with him as he backed up and stumbled into the hallway. As he passed through the door frame, his headlamp blinked back to life as if it had been on all along.

“What the _hell_ just happened?” he asked hoarsely, clutching his chest as his heartbeat ramped up to entirely new levels. He could feel his heart pounding beneath his clenched fist. “I… Why was I…”

Tifa was gasping for breath. “I...don’t know,” she replied breathlessly, tentatively letting go of his arm to shake out her wrists.

Cloud couldn’t stop staring in horror at the room he’d somehow ended up in. “It was like I was… drawn there,” he muttered, more to himself than to her.

“Yo!” Cid’s voice, loud and sharp, echoed from the first floor. “You guys coming or what? We ain’t got time to fuck around!”

“We -” Tifa began, but Cloud’s sudden hand on her wrist stopped her and he shook his head. Cid and Barret didn’t need to know about this - not yet, anyway. He didn’t even know what _this_ was, and Tifa curtly nodded her understanding. “We’ll be right there!” she called to the others before returning her attention to Cloud. “Come on,” she said, her voice impossibly soft. “Let’s get out of here.”

Cloud nodded his agreement and went to follow her, but not before casting one last, nervous look at the dark cavern that was _the room_ stretching out before him. He shuddered and quickened his pace.

Once they regrouped back at the two vans, they began to prepare. Cloud and Tifa reviewed the papers he and Barret had dug out of the safe while Barret reviewed their team’s extensive research notes, and Cid - claiming leader privilege - took the seat closest to the monitors to go over the greenhouse footage. Cloud gave up on trying to read the old medical notes early on, and instead he contented himself to listen to Barret explain his team’s research. Barret was more than happy to oblige.

“And this is the worst guy of all,” the older man was saying as he handed over a worn photograph. Cloud took it gingerly, and frowned at the older man staring at him from behind the camera. He had long, greasy hair and wore a stereotypical white laboratory coat over a suit, but it was his eyes that had Cloud’s frown deepening. Not even the glare from his owlish, wire-frame glasses could hide his dead, soulless, calculating gaze into the camera. It had Cloud grimacing, and when he briefly showed Tifa the photograph, her expression mirrored his.

More so, a small headache flared to life between his eyes - the same sort of headache he had felt when Tifa had snapped him out of his earlier daze. “He’s pretty creepy,” he confirmed as he handed the photo back to Barret. “What was he, a scientist?”

“Doctor,” Barret explained. “His name was Hojo, and he was originally the Shinra family doctor before he became one of the doctors workin’ at the asylum. Always seemed to be a package deal with the place, that guy.” He glared over his shoulder at the manor before continuing, “But that ain’t the worst of it. He was said to have experimented on people. Had some fascination with human life apparently, and he was always tryin’ to find a solution to death. Or as he put in, ‘the confines of a mortal body’.”

Cloud made a face. “What, like immortality or something?”

“Exactly like immortality,” Barret replied with a grim, somber nod. “That dude was messed up.”

“Shut the hell up and take a look at this,” Cid cut in, and then scooted over to make room for the rest of the team. “So I can see the two of them in this shot here -” he brandished a hand towards the screen, “- but then, a minute later, Vincent is gone.” He rewound the video and replayed it for emphasis. “Did you see that?”

Cloud squinted at the grainy camera feed. The camera’s night vision stained the world a dark, green hue that made individual shapes difficult to process, but he could distinctly make out Yuffie studying her camera screen while Vincent peered at the wall. Then Vincent shifted, a blur of moment, before he moved entirely out of the camera range.

Then everything changed.

There was a wheeze of static and then Yuffie was looking towards the door, eyes wide and mouth parted in shock. The footage twitched then, and between one blink and the next, the room had emptied. It was as if no one had been there at all.

Cloud leaned back, thoroughly disturbed. _Did what happen to me happen to them?_ he wondered as he glanced at Tifa. She must have thought the same thing because she met his gaze with worry etched into her eyes.

“They must have gone to the basement,” Barret insisted. “The hidden room that Cloud and I found.”

Cloud shoved his hands into his hoodie pocket. “Could have,” he said, shifting his weight to his other foot.

Barret shot him a look. “ _Could_ have?” he echoed. “ _Could_ have?! Nah man, it’s _for sure._ They _gotta_ be in the basement, with a ghost or some shit.”

“We - We need to get them out of there,” Tifa added. Her hands were clenched in her lap. “Let’s prepare. Make sure that we have everything we need just in case.”

 _Just in case of_ _ **what**_ _,_ Cloud wanted to ask, but he kept his mouth shut - he probably didn’t want to know the answer.

Barret nodded at Tifa. “Hell yes,” he said. “I’m gonna get our salt and shit. Think I need a pistol?” he asked, but then immediately answered, “Yeah for sure, I’m gonna go grab our -”

Cid suddenly slapped his thighs, effectively cutting Barret off. “I need a minute,” he announced, and got to his feet. “You all get your shit in order, I’m gonna have myself a smoke, and then we’ll find the rest of our team.”

With that, he stomped his way out of the back door. A few moments later the distinct, pungent scent of a freshly lit cigarette floated through the strengthening wind and singed Cloud’s nostrils. He sneezed despite himself.

“Hey Cloud,” Tifa said after a few moments.

He cocked his head inquisitively at her as he wiped his nose. “Yeah?”

“Do you think that maybe… a spirit may have attached itself to you?”

Cloud blinked at her, and he was suddenly aware of how quiet it was. How even the crickets had gone silent, their songs muted, and the night seemed larger and darker because of it. The wind, while blowing his hair in gentle tumbles, did not rustle the grasses. Wolves did not howl at the half-hidden moon, and owls did not question the star-speckled sky. It was simply silent, and the beating of his own heart seemed all too loud in his ears.

“What?” he replied, brilliantly.

Tifa wrung her hands in front of her. “You know, like… for a second there earlier you seemed so _off,_ and I was just -”

But Cloud was already shaking his head. “No. No way. That’s impossible, that was just… just because I was tired,” he said lamely, because it was a fairly lame excuse. He had no explanation for what had happened in that room. He could not fathom the sheer disorientation he had experienced, he could not explain the ringing in his ears or the sense of calmthat had descended on him, and he could not describe the _ripping_ sensation he had felt when Tifa had pulled him away. And as for the whispers…

Cloud shook his head harder now. “No,” he said, again. “Nothing is… _attached_ to me. That’s impossible.”

Barret snorted. “And here I thought that attachment stuff was a myth,” he said, and turned towards Tifa. “You really think Chocobo-head has been possessed or something?”

Cloud made a face. “ _Hey.”_

“Not possessed,” Tifa corrected. “Attached. Like it had... _tethered_ itself to Cloud’s life force instead of whatever was holding it here in the first place.”

“Look, _nothing_ has attached itself to me,” Cloud said. “I feel _perfectly normal,_ okay? Like… Like sure, that was a little weird -” even he could admit that much, “- but that doesn’t mean that I now have a ghost best friend or whatever.”

Barret arched an eyebrow. “What was a little weird?” he asked, which had Cloud grimacing.

“Well, I…”

“Cloud walked to the room with the basement stairwell, and then started listening to the wall,” Tifa cut in, which had Cloud crossing his arms and scowling. “And it was _really weird._ Like…” She glanced at Cloud and swallowed hard. “Like you were _possessed_ or something.”

“I am _not_ possessed,” Cloud insisted exasperatedly.

Barret wracked his gaze over Cloud, as if he was trying to find the spirit that had supposedly tethered itself to him. “Maybe not right now,” he said, his tone somewhat stiff, “but as for later…”

Cloud harshly sighed, giving up. “Whatever,” he said, and moved to leave the van. “This shit isn’t real. Let’s just find everyone that’s missing and get the hell out of here,” he added, and then called out, “Cid! Cid, finish your cigarette and let’s -”

But his voice trailed off when he realized that the air no longer smelled like cigarette smoke, and no one was answering.

Tifa, sensing something was wrong, stood up and made her way to join him at the back of the van. “Cid?” she called out, her tone tentative. Her fingers brushed against the edge of the door as she pushed it open a bit wider. “Cid, you there?”

“Cid!” Cloud called again as he hopped down and walked around the van, but sure enough, the older man was completely and utterly gone. He clenched his jaw and kicked at the grass, cursing under his breath, before running a harsh hand through his hair and making his way back towards Tifa and Barret. Tifa’s eyes lit up when he approached, but they dimmed the moment he shook his head.

“He’s gone,” Cloud deadpanned.

Barret narrowed his gaze. “Bullshit,” he scoffed as he left the van - making it rock a bit from his as he did so - and stomped around to the back of the vehicle with strong assuredness. “He’s just having a smoke is all - he said he needed a minute.”

Tifa hopped out of the back of the van to join him, and she was biting a nail - a bad habit that she fell into every time she was stressed. Suddenly, she gasped. “Look,” she said, and she knelt down next to something on the ground - a half-smoked cigarette, its butt still smoldering a dark, sooty red.

Cloud cursed again under his breath; Barret cursed far louder, but instead of looking at the old cigarette, he was staring at the Shinra manor looming over them. “The hell is this place?” he murmured.

“Guys…” Tifa slowly exhaled. “They _have_ to be in the basement,” There was an edge to her voice. The fear was still there, as was the nervousness and trepidation, but there was a new hardness as well. “The two of you found those blueprints with the stairs, Aerith had mentioned the open space behind the wall, and Cloud - both you _and_ Aerith had strange experiences in that room. Not to mention,” she added with a half-hearted smile, “we’ve searched every other place _twice_ and still haven’t found them.”

Cloud grimaced. He didn’t like it - he didn’t like it at all, in fact - but… “Yeah,” he finally said. “Yeah, I think so too.”

Tifa’s smile warmed a bit.

“What _I_ wanna know is what we’re dealin’ with,” Barret said. “Like, whatever the hell this thing is, it ain’t a regular ghost.”

Tifa scuffed the ground with her boots. “Maybe… a demon?” She glanced up at them, wincing a bit. “I really don’t know, to be honest. Aerith knows a lot more about the different types than I do.”

“Vincent would too,” Barret added, his tone low, but then he cleared his throat. “I should...check in with the babysitter,” he muttered, phone already pulled out and in his hand. “I’ll be right back.”

“Stay close to the car,” Tifa said. “Just in case.”

Barret nodded, but his usual energy seemed more subdued as he made his way to the back of the van for privacy. A gust of wind picked up, chilling Cloud to the bone, and it made the back door of the van groan as it shifted shut.

The moment Barret was gone, Cloud glanced at Tifa. “Look,” he said, squaring his jaw with determination. “I don’t like this. I don’t want to go back to that room. But… But I think you’re right.” It took him a lot of effort to admit it, and his head was beginning to ache with the conflicting ideas of paranormal and real life. “I think we need to be prepared for _anything,_ including… angry ghosts.” Gods, it sounded so lame when he said it, but he relentlessly continued, “So I’ll grab the supplies, and do you want to grab a camera, or recorder, or something?”

Tifa managed a small smile. “ _I’m_ the leader, remember? But yeah, I do. How about we wait for Barret to finish with his phone call first,” she continued as she pulled her own phone out, “and in the meantime, we… I don’t know, do you think we should call Burke about the wall?” She worried her lower lip. “Do you think he would know anything?”

“I don’t know,” Cloud admitted with a vague shrug. “It’s pretty late though… would he even still be awake?”

Tifa sighed. “I guess not,” she said and slipped the phone back into her pocket. “Still… I don’t like this, Cloud.” She glanced up at him, and moonlight stained her dark eyes a shade of silver. “I don’t like this at all.”

Cloud watched her for a moment before his gaze dipped to the ground between them, at their shoes covered with dew and mud. “Me neither,” he replied, his voice low. He lifted his head. “Is Barret done yet?”

“Not sure,” Tifa replied with a small shrug. “I don’t hear him, though.”

Cloud nodded, until something Tifa had said clicked within it… and judging by the look on Tifa’s face, it clicked for her as well.

They couldn’t hear Barret.

Cloud whirled around. “Godsdamn -” he ground out, but then something shifted. The gusting wind, encircling him in its chilly embrace, carried with it a single, broken whisper, one that seemed to echo right next to his ears, or stand with them in the grass... or maybe it was even more intimately inside his very eardrums.

“ _Come find me_.”

The voice was high, childlike, and sounded strangely familiar. _Too_ familiar in fact, and goosebumps pricked his arms as a shiver rippled down his spine. His beating heart clawed into his throat.

He spun towards Tifa. “Did you hear -” he began, but his voice trailed off. There was no point in asking; judging by her wide-eyed, pallid expression, she had.

“That voice…” Her voice wavered between them. “I… I _recognized_ it. It sounded like… like…”

“ _Marlene!”_

Barret’s shout shattered the night’s silence, and Cloud went cold - the sort of cold that had nothing to do with the chill night air - just as they watched Barret sprint across the property towards the manor.

“Barret!” Cloud called, but the larger man didn’t stop.

It left them no choice: they had to chase after him.

Cloud spun around. “Tifa -” he began, but she was already running towards their van to grab their supplies. He joined her the next moment and took the pocket knife that was half-buried beneath a stack of papers; slipping that into his jeans pocket, he then opened the passenger door and rummaged beneath the seat. A moment later his hand wrapped around the textured wood of his other weapon of choice: a baseball bat. With a quick grunt he pulled it out, hefting it onto his shoulder.

“Got everything?” Tifa asked, her tone quiet. She wore a fresh headlamp and she had snapped a voice recorder on her skirt. She also carried a bundle of sage and a bag of salt in each hand. Her lips were pressed together in a thin line, and her brows were furrowed in determination - determination offset only by her pallid expression and trembling hands.

Cloud managed a shaky nod. “I hope so,” he replied, sliding the van door shut behind them.

He switched his headlamp on while Tifa checked the batteries, and together they confirmed that nothing important was left behind. Ignoring the loud drumming in his heart that beat in time with his footsteps, Cloud instead paid attention to the dry brambles of the lawn that crushed beneath his boots as they made their way towards the manor’s entrance. The baseball bat’s weight in his grasp provided a small measure of comfort, yet even that wasn’t enough as the front door - elegant, solid, overwhelming - towered over them for the umpteenth time that night.

Cloud glanced over his shoulder towards Tifa, who met his gaze with a pale, hard look of her own. “Ready?” he murmured.

“Ready,” she whispered back.

Without another word, Cloud pushed open the door.

Just like before, he immediately recognized the manor’s heavy, oppressive atmosphere. His eyes once again slid over the staircase - not so dusty any longer - and towards the rooms that once promised horror and now guaranteed it. The sense of being watched permeated his core and tasted acidic on his tongue, and he tore his gaze away from the rooms just out of sight to instead focus on the staircase.

He and Tifa marched up the creaky old stairs one at a time. Their footsteps echoed against the wood in rhythm with each other, creating a stuttered wooden heartbeat that echoed through the quiet manor. A door’s hinges squeaked from somewhere far away. A window rattled and moaned from the wind. He gripped the bat tightly enough that his knuckles were white with strain, and he only further tightened his hold when they arrived on the second floor.

His headlamp flickered.

A moan - or was that a laugh? - whispered through the air like a gentle breeze, tousling his blond locks.

“I hate this,” Cloud whispered underneath his breath.

“It’s not too late to change hobbies,” Tifa murmured in reply. He could hear the salt bag rattle in her trembling grip. “We could turn around now, in fact?”

“And miss out on all the fun?” Cloud managed a thin smile, all sharp edges and razor-thin confidence. “No thanks.”

They continued on. The air grew colder, and the atmosphere became heavier, _suffocating_ even. He felt Tifa’s hand tighten around the soft fabric of his hoodie, and he pretended not to notice. Taking a deep breath, he slowly creaked the room’s door open…

… and suddenly he felt like he was a child again.

As a child, Cloud had been eager to explore the manor when some local boys dared him to. Of course, he had accidentally ended up locked in the manor at night instead. He felt the familiar terror now, the panic when things began whispering from beneath the curved wall, the screams that had gouged into his mind and scratched themselves into his memories.

He sucked in a breath.

“You okay?” Tifa asked, her voice low. Her headlight shone onto the suspicious wall, and her gaze did not stray from the epicenter of its light.

Cloud managed a thin nod. “Think so,” he whispered back. Because he _was_ \- he was totally, completely, one-hundred-percent fine. Tifa was right beside him, and he took comfort in having her presence here with him; if something happened to him again, if it overcame him again, then she would snap him out of it. And he would protect her, too. They would protect each other.

With that thought firmly in mind, he brandished the baseball bat before him like it was a sword instead of a blunt object and took a step closer to the wall. Whatever had happened earlier - whatever had taken over his mind and pulled him in here the first time - would _not_ be happening again.

Blissfully, nothing actually happened. It was almost underwhelming; the wall sat there innocently, with no signs of movement or abnormality coming from its textured, peeling walls. It seemed...dormant _._

“Cloud? Are you okay?” Tifa’s voice nervously broke through the silence, and he was suddenly aware of her hand on his shoulder once again.

Cloud exhaled. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.” He glanced at her. “Are you good?” And when she nodded, he continued, “I’m… going to try something, to see if whatever’s happening here will happen again.”

Alarm flickered across Tifa’s expression. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“No,” he admitted, “but it’s the only idea I have.”

Tifa pursed her lips, but eventually nodded her blessing. “I’ll be right behind you,” she promised.

“Thanks,” Cloud replied, and he meant it. After giving her a final cursory glance, he took another step towards the wall. The heavy presence began to press down on him, but he couldn’t tell if it was to help him or deter him; either way, it stilled as Cloud lifted his hand and pressed it against the wall.

It was warm. _Strangely_ warm. Cloud turned over his shoulder to say as much to Tifa, when suddenly something new cut him off.

“ _Good choice_.”

A child’s voice penetrated his mind, and he winced as it sank its claws in deep to the depths of his mind. Tifa’s eyes widened as he dropped the baseball bat. The weapon collided with the floor, accompanied by a dull _thud_ as he tried to stumble away from the wall… and yet his hand wouldn’t budge. He could not free himself, and he turned in confusion only to see a distorted, graying _hand_ wrapped around his wrist.

Panic flared white-hot against his nerves and turned his very bones into shards of electrifying lightning. “Tifa.” He tried to keep the terror out of his voice, tried to keep calm, yet his voice crawled higher anyway. “Tifa, there’s something grabbing me, there’s a _hand -!”_

Yet Tifa didn’t reply, and amidst his struggling to free himself, he glanced over his shoulder and saw why. She was doubled over and clutching her ears, as if she was in pain.

“Tifa!” he shouted, but she didn’t seem to hear. Purpose cut through his own flaring, tight-wound horror, and he reached into his pocket to grab his pocket knife - what he should have done in the first place, in fact - yet something in the corner of his vision snagged his attention. He turned, wide-eyed and breathing ragged, only to see the ghostly form of a child by the door. The young boy’s soul had his arms around himself as he watched them, and as Cloud’s eyes flicked up towards the gray, lifeless entity’s face, the child smiled. Its teeth were whittled down to nubs.

“ _Another visitor for the doctor,_ ” the child sang in a broken, guttural voice.

Cloud’s eyes widened. _Doctor?_ he thought, but had no time to move or cry out. The pressure around his wrist mounted, and he turned to see something coming out of the wall. An arm. A shoulder. A face, with an open chasm of darkness spilling out behind it…

Cloud’s vision flickered.

Everything went dark.

* * *

_A scream ripped apart the room and curdled the air. It clawed against the walls and shattered against the windows like glass against concrete, and Cloud’s eyes snapped open. He reached forward without thinking, a gasp lodged in his throat, only for his hands - small, childlike, and certainly not his own - to slam into something hard, something unyielding, something ice cold and lightly curved:_

_A glass tank._

_His eyes narrowed in confusion, and he suddenly realized that glass surrounded him. It warped the world around him and smudged his vision into shades of gray and green, and as he tilted his head back to see how high it went, other sensations also slipped across his consciousness: The air tasted sour, something bubbled in the distance, and it smelled as if something was burning…_

_Another scream suddenly pierced the air, and with a jolt, he realized that he did not know where he was. Anxiety swelled within him, and his fingers curled against the glass of their own volition; all he knew was that something was wrong, terribly wrong, and he had to escape…!_

_But then a shadow passed over him._

_He looked up and quivered, a movement that had nothing to do with the cold._

_A man was standing just beyond his glass prison, and with a start Cloud recognized him to be Hojo - the man from the photograph. While that photo had been nearly a hundred years old, the scientist before him looked exactly the same: a hooked nose, owlish glasses, a white lab coat that hid a thin, hawkish figure. Yet the most memorable similarity was in the way his eyes seemed to stare through him and dismantle him, label his pieces, and discard whatever was unnecessary._

_Cloud tried to stand, yet his limbs refused to listen; instead they dragged him away from Hojo until his back was pressed flush with the glass behind him._

_Hojo smiled, all teeth and sharp edges. “And so the subject awakens.”_

_Cloud pressed himself further against the glass, until the hard grooves of his spine ached against its chilled surface, and then his lips were moving of their own accord. “Doctor,” he rasped. His voice was small, ruined, and the words were not his; it almost felt as if someone was speaking through him. “I… I wanna…”_

“ _Subject 028 appears to be conscious and capable of verbal communication.” Hojo clasped his hands behind his coat and continued to stare, unblinking, into the tank. “Estimates predict roughly 9.79 kilograms of carbon is found in a human child, which once the carbon is activated, creates… 61.23 grams of gold. And this,” he added with a sharp smile, “will allow research to continue for several more months...”_

_Another scream bounced off the glass and clawed against the ceiling. Cloud flinched; Hojo only turned around with a world-weary sigh._

“ _Subject 025.” He began walking towards something behind him, and his hollow footsteps echoed against the walls and rang clear in the room - but not just any room, Cloud quickly gathered, but a laboratory. “I believe that we have previously discussed your emotional tendencies. Now if you do not compose your -”_

_The screaming only increased in pitch. It sharpened, until it could no longer be compared to fingernails clawing against the walls but rather a knife slamming against stone over and over and over. The scream rattled the glass, and Cloud slapped his hands over his ears. He tried but found that he was unable to look away, and he had no choice but to watch - horrified and transfixed - as Hojo moved to the side and gave him an unobstructed view of a surgical table. There was a woman strapped down to the clean, shiny metal. Leather buckles bruised her pale skin and cut deep tracks against her blue-tinged veins. Her hair, blond and stringy and dirty, fanned her face and tumbled over the table. She was wide-eyed and red-faced, screaming all the while, the tendons in her neck popping out from the intensity of her fit._

_And Cloud could not look away. He did not look away when Hojo pulled a long knife out of a nearby cupboard. He did not look away when Hojo returned to the woman’s side and muttered something about finding a new subject._

_And he did not look away when Hojo plunged the dagger into the woman’s chest._

_Scarlet bubbled at the source and spilled across her ivory dress, and her wild screams softened to little more than blood-stained gurgles. Cloud’s breaths came hard and fast as his chest tightened and strangled his throat. His legs kicked out uselessly as he tried to push himself even deeper into his glass cell. Rational thought faded as all he could now see, all he could think about, were the woman’s rosy teeth and how quiet the laboratory suddenly seemed without her shrieking._

_Cloud squeezed shut his burning eyes._

_It was too quiet…_

* * *

The world held its breath.

Water trickled down the walls and dripped from the ceiling. It pooled onto the stained, stone floor and created fragile mirrors that reflected nothing but the hurt and heartache of dusty vials, chipped glass beakers, and molten green and copper jars that bled rust. Dust danced in the air in a delicate pirouette, undisturbed by open windows or cold drafts or muffled breathing. For a moment, the world was quiet.

Until it wasn’t.

Cloud opened his eyes with a croaking gasp. His throat burned. His face felt hot, and when he blinked, something wet slipped down his cheek and into his hair. Breathing felt painful. His head was spinning, and the world twisted and turned around him as if it was searching for the best angle. Lurching movements in his vision made his stomach _roll._ A wheezing sound hissed past his lips as he careened, trying to sit upright, but something held him back and he fell back against a hard surface, his brow pinched in confusion.

_The hell…?_

He tilted his head to one of his hands, and his gaze fixated on the leather strap wrapped around his wrist. It dug into his pale skin and bit against his fluttering pulse. Beneath his prone arm was a thick, rusty metal sheet.

Slowly - painfully slowly - he began putting the pieces together, fighting against the difficulty to string two thoughts together into something coherent. There were gaps in his logic, blank spaces where _something_ should exist, and he licked his dry lips as he shifted his head the other way.

There was some sort of holding cell across from him. Its curved glass walls were stained and scratched, and there were distinct grooves etched into the crystal that looked distinctly like claw marks. Despite the strange stains splashed across its surface and the black mold stretching up from its base, there was no mistaking the unconscious figure hunched inside.

“Zack,” Cloud croaked. He shifted slightly, trying to get in a more comfortable position, but he was still unable to move. His hips were beginning to ache. Panic strummed an off-tune chord in his veins that had his fingers curling against the table’s cold metal. “Zack!”

Receiving no answer, Cloud swallowed thickly and shifted his gaze further up. It was then that he realized that _everyone_ was here: Aerith, Yuffie, Barret, Cid, Vincent, and Tifa. Unlike him, however, they had all been confined, unbound and unconscious, in glass jars.

 _Gotta get out._ The thought sang in Cloud’s consciousness and, gritting his teeth, he tugged hard against the leather binds that held his wrists in place. They didn’t budge. It didn’t help that the world continued to sway nauseatingly around him; his arms felt like lead and his head felt like it had been stuffed full of cotton, while his tongue felt fat and his mind felt hazy.

 _Was I…_ His eyelashes fluttered as he struggled to form the next words. _Was I… drugged?_ He had no way of knowing, nevermind that he had no idea who had the chance to drug him. _Maybe Burke?_ he wondered weakly as he continued to tug the straps. He discarded that thought immediately, understanding enough to know that Burke couldn’t have taken _everyone_ out in his frail state; and besides, he was back in Nibelheim awaiting their morning call. He couldn’t have…

Sudden movement snagged his groggy attention.

The confusing picture began to take form: It was as if a shadow had rearranged itself against the wall, and then he heard dragging footsteps scrape unevenly against the floor. Other sounds then penetrated his ears: a rustle of fabric, the popping and cracking of joints, a rasping, breathless sigh. The footsteps grew louder. Then two milky eyes suddenly blinked against the dark, followed closely by a smile.

Cloud went deathly still as the air around him chilled several degrees. The grin looked as if it had been cut out clumsily with a rusty knife: it was uneven, lopsided, jagged, and _wrong,_ and as its breath misted the air between them, a single tooth - held on by little more than a single ligament - swayed precariously.

The fine hairs on the back of Cloud’s neck stood on end. He yanked against the straps until the skin tore, and yet he was unable to free himself - he was _trapped!_ He felt as if he were choking, as if there were slender fingers squeezing against his airway and suffocating him. White-hot panic singed the edges of his vision.

The thing’s smile widened. Its cheeks lifted and curved its sunken eyes in crescents, and then it took a shambling step further into the dim overhead light. Cloud’s eyes widened further; his breath whistled between his teeth in a harsh staccato. The creature’s hair was long and stringy, and its bones tugged and pushed against leathery skin that eventually disappeared beneath a white laboratory coat. Its gait was an awkward shuffle. Something glinted in its clenched hand and Cloud wanted to scream, to cry out for help, to shout at one of his teammates to wake the fuck up.

But he couldn’t get enough air.

He couldn’t get enough air, and though nothing was around his throat, it was difficult to breathe.

The creature took a shambling step forward, and its whisper permeated the air: “And sssso the sssssubject wakesssss up….!”

Cloud’s breath stilled in his lungs.

 _Hojo,_ he suddenly knew.

“Fuck off!” His voice was high-pitched and scratchy, but he didn’t care anymore. “Get the _fuck_ away from me!”

Hojo, his dilapidated body caught somewhere between living and dead, leaned further over him. Watching him move was similar to watching a puppet; first the torso shifted, the movement awkward and jerky, before the limbs snapped into position. His head bobbed on an atrophied neck. And when he lifted his hand, his fingers were clenched around a scalpel.

“Ssssubject 047 appearssss to be conscioussss and capable of verbal communicationnnnn,” Hojo continued, his voice little more than a jagged moan. “Continuing the proccccedure nowwww…!”

Cloud yanked an arm; pain lanced through his shoulder, but he hardly felt it. “Get away! _Fuck off!_ ” he screamed. Hojo ignored him and moved the scalpel so that it directly hovered over his heart. “ _No!”_

All of a sudden, time seemed to slow.

Dust spiraled in the air. His friends were all still unconscious in their glass jars. Yet there was someone else standing there now, someone with long white hair, green eyes, and wearing some sort of hospital gown. His outline was blurry, and as Cloud watched in confusion, he lifted an arm and pointed towards something to his right.

Then he disappeared.

Cloud sucked in breath as time resumed, and he twisted over best he could to see whatever the unknown being had pointed out. A jagged piece of metal was stuck in the wall beside him, and he realized that though he could not move his arm, he could push against the leather strap and wrap his fingers around the metal. He didn’t care that blood beaded and tricked down his wrists. He didn’t care that the metal pricked the soft skin of his fingers, he only grabbed it and _yanked._

The leather holding his wrist got caught on the sharp metal and snapped.

Cloud took a moment to process that his hand was _free,_ but the moment that he finally did…

He grabbed the scalpel that now hovered mere centimeters above his chest. The icy blade cut into his palm but he hardly noticed; he only wrenched it out of Hojo’s flimsy grip and then _shoved_ as hard as he could. Hojo fell onto the floor, and brittle bone cracked against the stone. A twisted sound clawed out of Hojo’s mouth.

The moment Hojo hit the ground, everyone suddenly began to wake.

Zack was the first to stir, and Cloud heard him shout his name from his cage before he began banging against its glass walls. But Cloud didn’t dare turn away, not now, because Hojo was already picking his battered, semi-rotted body off the floor. His jaw clicked as it snapped in place. Shoulders popped, ribs were pushed back into their sockets, and his head hung at an odd angle as he stood.

And yet he was _still smiling._ A shudder coursed through Cloud and he redoubled his efforts to cut through the straps against his other wrist, but his cut palm made everything slippery, and the scalpel fumbled in his grip. Yet he was able to break it just as something behind him shattered; he heard glass rain to the floor in a series of pure notes - “ _Help Cloud!”_ Aerith was shouting - and then Zack was suddenly beside him, pulling at the binds strapping his ankles to the metal table.

“Holy shit,” Zack muttered under his breath, wide-eyed and hands shaking. “Holy shit. What the hell. Holy…”

“ _Hurry!”_ Cloud’s voice sounded strangled, and he twisted his torso around just in time to see Hojo shuffling towards them with outstretched hands. Cloud’s heartbeat quickened and he ripped the strap holding his hips down. Zack freed both of his ankles and, finally free, Cloud half-slid, half-fell off of the table. His legs were numb and his shoulders and hands tingled. The room spun sickeningly to one side and he was immediately sick, even as Zack’s shaking hands gripped his shoulders and dragged him away from Hojo.

“Gotta…” Cloud sucked in bile-tasted breath. “Gotta free everyone…!”

Zack grip tightened. “You get the others. I’ll hold off this asshole!” he demanded.

“But -”

“No time!” Zack let Cloud go and was already grabbing a weapon - an old chair. Cloud wiped his mouth as he staggered to the nearest glass cell; the ground swayed beneath him and he nearly lost his balance, but he managed to stumble towards a tank containing Barret and Aerith. Barret was holding his head with a hand while he braced himself against the wall with the other, and Aerith stood beside him with a pallid expression.

He knew that he wouldn’t be able to break the glass with raw strength alone, not in his condition, so Cloud grabbed the nearest blunt object - a flashlight, its face cracked from when it had been dropped - and stumbled back to the holding cell. “Get back,” he croaked, and then slammed the flashlight against the glass with everything he had.

The cell, brittle in its old age, broke easily. Glass rained down to the floor in front of him. He could hear Zack taunt Hojo and call him a few choice names - a walking acne culture, a Botox before-image, an off-brand handbag - but his insults were interrupted by a yelp, and Cloud quickly turned to see Hojo reaching a bony hand towards Zack, who was backed up against the wall.

“Zack!” he shouted, but before he could do more something flew past his face - a shard of glass - and it shattered against the far wall beside Hojo’s head. “Ey, fugly!” Barret shouted.

“ _Cloud.”_ Aerith’s tense voice pulled at Cloud’s attention, and her trembling fingers latched onto his sleeve. “You get Tifa and Cid, and I’ll get Yuffie and Vincent.”

Cloud nodded, and then they split up. The sound of scraping furniture and odd hissing screeched behind him, and his hands shook as he smashed the flashlight against the walls of Tifa and Cid’s prison. Cracks spiderwebbed across the foggy glass, and with another hard hit they shattered entirely; the shards spiralled as they fell, their flat faces and razor-sharp edges catching the light and flinging it outward, and then Tifa had fallen into his arms.

“Time to go!” Cid shouted. He tossed something to Vincent, who caught it with one hand as swept forward, dark eyes smoldering, and a lighter flared to life between his fingers. Its tiny flame flickered in the dark as he chanted, “ _Beings of light, far and wide, this spell I cast shall not untie -”_

There was a crack as Hojo’s jaw dislocated entirely, and a haunting moan crawled out of his rotting throat.

“ _\- with sage, salt, water, and light -”_

Hojo’s shrieking climbed up an octave, and Cloud could clearly see the thin ligaments that tied his teeth to his black gums.

“The stairs!” Tifa yelled. Broken glass crushed beneath her boots as she darted forward, her arm wrapped around Yuffie’s waist as she helped the disoriented younger girl along. “Everyone, this way!”

Aerith was muttering a mantra of “ _Shit, shit, shit,_ ” as she ran to follow Tifa. Zack and Barret together slammed Hojo into a wall before they too began to run for it, with Cid right behind.

“ _\- I banish this evil from my sight.”_

“Vincent!” Cloud shouted, waiting for the final member of the team to catch up.

Vincent’s eyes flared. “ _Blessed be,_ bitch,” he finished, and snapped the lighter shut before he too sprinted for the staircase. Hojo wailed and wheezed behind them, and his boney fingers scraped and clawed at his atrophied chest. His fingers ripped apart leathery skin, and jagged nails scraped against bare ribs.

Cloud tore his eyes away from the literal horror and ran up the steps, two at a time…

… only to nearly run headfirst into a brick wall.

“The hell!” he shouted. Tifa and Aerith were running their hands along one sidel to look for a lever, while Cid and Barret checked the other side. Yuffie was doubled over with her hands on her knees, her breaths short and gasping, while Zack faced the bottom of the stairs with clenched teeth.

“ _Fuck,”_ Cid hissed under his breath. “Where the hell is the -”

Cid’s voice tapered off, and time seemed to slow once more.

Cloud blinked. The silvery man from before was standing at the top of the stairwell. Like before, his form wisped and wavered at its edges, his green eyes resting on Cloud. There was something buried within those eyes - an unspeakable sadness, or an emptiness that only comes after something is ripped away - before they dipped towards the floor.

There was a lever there. It was barely noticeable, as it was well-hidden by loose stone and gravel, but it was _there._

Cloud lifted his head. “Thank you,” he murmured, but the man had once again vanished.

Time resumed.

“Fuck!” Zack’s shout tore at the air and it was followed by an unearthly jumble of moaning and noises that almost sounded like words. Overgrown toenails clicked against the stone floor below. Loose fabric rustled. A low laugh, one that sounded eerily like the wind, bubbled out of a broken throat. 

“ _Vincent!”_ Cid hissed.

“On it.” Vincent’s low voice was almost calming, and he took a step forward as he flicked on the lighter again… but this time, there was no need. Cloud had already dived forward and yanked on the hidden lever, causing Tifa to let out a startled yelp just as a harsh rumble shook the stairwell and the wall began to move. Books, resting precariously on the outside bookshelf, tumbled onto the dusty ground. Sickly light streamed in from the outer room, yet it was welcome just the same.

“ _Out, out, out!”_ Barret shouted. Aerith had already grabbed Yuffie’s hand and was practically dragging the younger girl forward, while Cid followed close behind. Zack took off after them while Vincent and Cloud brought up the rear, with the former murmuring under his breath all the while:

“ _Ashes to ashes -”_

Cloud stumbled on a broken chair, but Zack grabbed his arm to steady him. The world still spun about in sickening angles. His stomach flipped and rolled without him. He tasted ash and decay on his tongue, and wondered if he would be sick again.

“ _\- spirit to spirit -”_

But there was no time. No time to be sick, no time to stumble, no time to even pause. He could hear harsh breathing behind them and the sounds of footsteps dragging up the stairs, getting much closer, until it was all too easy to imagine rotten breath warming his neck and bony fingers clutching his hood…

Cloud glanced over his shoulder, unable to stop himself as they ran down the second floor hallway. It was dark, but not dark enough. He could clearly make out those milky eyes peering at him out of the shadows; he could see the sharp edges of his smile emblazoned on his sunken face.

A shiver ripped down his spine, and he tore his gaze away to sprint down the steps, two at a time. Zack’s hand tightened around his arm to help balance him.

“ _\- take this soul -”_

His boots hit the ground floor. “This way!” Cid shouted from the front door. The others were already standing outside, and the pale sunrise softened their wide-eyed features as they watched Zack, Vincent, and Cloud hurry towards them. Barret and Tifa stretched their hands out to them, and Cloud reached forward. His fingers interlocked with Tifa’s, and then he was being pulled out beneath the waning starlight.

“ _\- banish this evil!”_ Vincent finished, and with a gasping breath he slammed the door shut. A wild shrieking cry echoed inside, something crossed between a gurgling laugh and a screech, and fingernails scraped eerily against the door. Cloud held his breath.

And then all went silent.

Cid was the first to recover. “Well,” he said, clearing his throat. “I think we, _ah_ , discovered why the Shinra Manor has so much activity.”

Barret shot to his feet, his chest heaving. Sweat pricked his brow. “The _hell_ was that thing? That thing was like… like a massive-ass man-embryo!”

Cloud closed his eyes. “That… was Hojo,” he finally said. The ground was cool beneath his feverish skin. Now that the threat wasn’t so immediate, he was becoming more painfully aware of the abuse his body had taken. His wrists stung. His shoulder throbbed. Blood stained his cut palm. The world still seemed to sway every time he closed his eyes so he pinned his gaze on the sky above, where dawn was just beginning to stretch across the scattered clouds and the world was dyed shades of rosy pink.

“Hojo?” Barret shook his head. “Hell nah. That creepy doctor guy _has_ to be dead, this guy was alive -”

“No… I think Cloud is right.” Aerith’s lips pressed into a fine line as she added her input. “The feeling I got… the sense of despair and hurt I had felt earlier… it all orbited around him.”

Tifa sighed shakily. “And you saw his glasses and his jacket? They were the same as the photo you showed us, Barret.”

The larger man shook his hard more fervently this time. “But… But that’s…”

“Impossible?” Vincent finished for him as he arched a delicate eyebrow. “The impossible is just a word for the undiscovered, and I believe that we have unearthed something new today.”

“Literally,” Cid grunted. He kicked at the ground before turning to Tifa with a hard glare in his eyes. “Next time,” he enunciated, “ _I’m_ picking the investigation.”

Cloud sighed. “Don’t blame us,” he said, and draped a hand over his eyes. “Blame the creepy goblin in there.”

“Goblin?” Zack’s laugh sounded nearly hysterical. “Gods, fuck this place. You used to live near here, guys?”

Cloud made a face. And to think that he had, as a child, been trapped in the room right beside the basement. That he had heard those whispers, and now that he knew they had come from that _monster…_

He let out a low groan. “Zack,” he said slowly.

“Yeah?”

“Please shut up.”

There was a sudden rustle as Yuffie, who had been dry heaving in some bushes, pushed herself onto her feet. “Can we go now?” she demanded. “This sucks. Even taking finals would be better than this.”

After a bit of talk regarding purification and packing up of the manor’s investigation, Vincent and Aerith marched back indoors with the sun as their shield while they worked on completing the shoddy purifying Vincent had done while they were trying to escape. The noises coming from the manor were now all normal; but each time a creak or shudder came from the settling house in the morning chill, Cloud still found himself jumping. He quietly made a promise to himself to never enter the front doors again, but he had to break that promise almost instantly when the purifying was complete. Tifa clutched his arm as they carefully went inside together, both breathing an immense sigh of relief as the once chilly weight of entering was now as uneventful as walking into a coffee shop back in Midgar.

Cloud and Zack worked together in the music room to disassemble the camera and sound equipment. Cloud carefully placed a camera in one of the cases while Zack stared at the piano again.

“Ghosts like pianos?” he asked with a wry smile.

Cloud looked up and nodded once. “Ghosts like pianos,” he confirmed, wishing the tightness in his throat wasn’t still bothering him. Clicking the camera case shut, he shifted it so it was handle-side up and carefully returned to his feet. He winced as his bandaged palm twisted and the wound opened once more. Cloud sighed, and pressed his palm against the inside sleeve of his sweatshirt to staunch the bleeding. With his unhurt hand, he reached down to pick up the case. Zack stretched his arms out and joined him by the archway to the hall.

“Ready to go?” Zack asked cheerfully. Cloud nodded again. They set off down the hall, leaving behind the atrium of a room. As Cloud walked, he thought he felt a familiar, heavy presence for a moment. He suspiciously glanced around at the peeling wallpaper and old, dilapidated furniture, but he didn’t see anything abnormal. This feeling wasn’t unpleasant, at least.

“I hate ghosts,” Cloud muttered under his breath as they approached the rest of the loitering team.

He had been hoping that no one had heard him, but Zack’s expression lit up. “Did I hear that right?” he said, loud enough for everyone else to hear. “Did I hear you, Cloud, say that you hate ghosts?”

Cloud harshly sighed. “No.”

“Are you sure?” Zack’s smile broadened. “Because I’m pretty sure I heard you say that you hate ghosts, but I thought that you don’t _believe_ in ghosts?”

“I don’t,” Cloud said, and he flipped him off. This brought about a much-needed lighthearted mood to the staunchly heavy feeling accompanying their still being in the manor. Cloud smirked as he followed the rest of them out, giving one final glance over his shoulder at the building that had haunted his childhood and gave him he’d rather completely forget. Now that the building was completely cleansed of all entities, the manor could just be that - an old, abandoned building in his hometown.

If he had stopped to think more than just how badly he wanted to get out of here, Cloud could have tiredly pointed out that they forgot to smudge Tifa’s van. If he could find it in himself to move past the sudden exhaustion that panged in his injuries and focus on the world outside his own mind, perhaps he would have noticed that the heavy presence had never left. Instead, he let his eyes drift closed as he leaned his forehead against the passenger window of the van, hoping that in his dreams, things would be much less scary.

So ended the haunting of the Shinra Manor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All that's left is the epilogue 🥰


	4. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Silver_doe287: Thank you for joining us on this wild ride! The epilogue took longer to get up than expected, but here it is, as promised! We hope to get another fic, Christmas-related, out soon for this series. Thank you for your comments and kudos!
> 
> Rand0mSmil3z: I hope everyone had a wonderful week, and a happy Thanksgiving to everyone in the US! Like SilverDoe mentioned, writing and editing this epilogue took _waaaay_ longer than planned, but hopefully you all enjoy it anyway 😊💙
> 
> Enjoy the chapter 👻

_“...tinuing our report. The latest discoveries around the horrific acts of the Shinra company’s late Professor Hojo have been unearthed, and former assistant and scientist Burke Horst has now been arrested for numerous crimes which include: conspiracy to commit murder, accessory to murder, and attempted homicide.”_

The serious-faced newscaster’s voice scratched through the television screen to the quiet, mostly empty bar. As the last patron had already left, Tifa had already turned off the neon “open” sign and locked the door for the night, and was now dimming the lights. The once lively room seemed almost cozy in the muted light, yet the atmosphere remained tense and serious as the news station continued to play.

Cloud sat at the bar counter and watched, enthralled, as images of the Shinra Manor flashed across the screen. He dimly noted that Tifa slipped on the stool beside him as he watched a clip of Burke - the same caretaker that they had met just a week prior - being hauled away in handcuffs to face trial. 

“I can’t believe Burke was a bad guy,” Tifa sighed as she procured a bottle of beer. Passing it to him, she grabbed another and murmured, “He seemed so nice and helpful…”

Cloud wasn’t sure what to say in response, so he said nothing. He only continued to watch the screen as the news crews showed footage of the Shinra basement where Hojo had done all of his experiments. He could clearly see the table he had been strapped to, as well as the shattered glass cells that had trapped the rest of the team, and unconsciously reached up to pull his sweatshirt sleeves over his arms to hide his bandaged wrists. Eventually he had to turn away completely when the news anchor began describing the experiments in detail - he had a hard enough time sleeping as it was.

Tifa held a hand against her mouth. “Gods, how can they just go _in_ there like that? Knowing what had happened there?”

Cloud took a long drink from his beer, and wrinkled his nose against the carbonation biting his tongue. “Don’t know,” he deadpanned.

He gripped his glass with a white-knuckled grip as he turned over the events of the previous week in his mind yet again. If they were pages of a book, they’d have been worn with use now; the pages would have been smudged with fingerprints, and there would be ink staining his hands. Yet the words remained crystal clear, each page as clean cut as the moment they were etched permanently in his mind, to the point where he could _smell_ the rot and decay and _taste_ the acridic fear on his tongue. 

He hated that.

The television cut in and out for a few moments, what felt like a new normal occurrence if the past few days were any indication. He sighed in annoyance and got up to smack the side of the old box, but only succeeded in aggravating his slowly-healing palm. Biting back a curse, he sat back down, pressed a gentle finger against the wound, and willed the stitches to stay put. The _last_ thing he needed was another visit to the hospital.

“You good?” Tifa asked, with worry creasing her brows.

Cloud sharply exhaled. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s nothing.”

Tifa hummed and opened her mouth to say more, but then the back door suddenly chimed and Barret’s loud voice boomed through the bar.

“We’re in here!” Tifa called, and a few loud stomps later, there appeared Barret and his young daughter Marlene. Zack was quick to follow, whom Barret must have picked up from work.

“Do _not_ say anything,” Zack threatened, though the threat was dulled by a cheeky grin as he began loosening his tie and unbuttoning the suit coat. “I have to wear this, okay? Business formal attire _only_.”

Cloud smirked. “Suits you,” and hopped off the stool to serve up some drinks - Tifa deserved a break.

Zack’s eyes widened as Cloud ducked behind the counter. “Was that a pun? Wait, Cloud, was that a pun? Was that a _joke?_ ”

Cloud only hummed and didn’t bother replying.

As he grabbed a few drinks, Barret’s daughter quickly climbed onto the stool he’d just vacated.

“Hey, Uncle Cloud!” she cried with a big grin and a wave. She was busy showing Tifa something on a sheet of paper, and Cloud offered her a quick wave before grabbing her a juice box. The young girl brandished her picture to Cloud - a couple cats and a bunch of stick figures in front of what looked like a crude rendering of Seventh Heaven - before taking the offered juice box.

“Look good,” he said with an approving nod.

“Hey ‘Uncle Cloud,’ toss me a beer!” Zack called, now looking much more comfortable as he tossed his button-up shirt to the side. He had worn an entire outfit beneath his suit, and Cloud was impressed to see the casual sweats and a band t-shirt materialize from the nice business attire he had been wearing previously. He tossed a beer at Zack’s request, and his roommate caught it one-handed with his bandaged fist. “Ah shit, that hurts,” he grumbled but not losing his grin. Cloud held up his bandaged palm in solidarity.

As Cloud tossed Barret a beer as well, the back door’s bell chimed again and more voices filled the bar. In walked the rest of the crew, led by a boisterous Yuffie with her usual camera slung around her neck and arms full of manilla envelopes. Behind her, Vincent had a cardboard box filled with candles and crystals. Aerith was behind her, face all smiles as she greeted the rest. Finally at the rear came a grumbling Cid, unlit cigarette between his teeth as he took in the view. “Isn’t this pleasant,” he muttered to himself.

“Looks like we’re all here!” Tifa hopped off her stool and moved to stand next to Cid. “It’s nice to see you guys again.” Cid grumbled something Cloud didn’t catch in reply.

Yuffie snapped a picture of Zack, whose arms were full of his business attire. “Ditto here,” she said with a grin. “Despite that being the scariest experience of my life, the pictures I got out of last week single-handedly passed me with _flying_ colors on my final!”

There was a chorus of exclamations from the group as Cloud brought out more drinks for the rest of the crew. Lids were twisted off, bottles clinked together, and Zack ruffled Yuffie’s short hair while saying, “That’s great, kiddo! Now let me delete that photo,” and the younger woman ducked under his outstretched arm. Cloud chuckled and, having finished his beer and enjoying the pleasant buzz, went to grab a second. It was then that he caught Aerith pinning him down with a strange stare, one that made him… nervous.

“Do I even want to know?”

Aerith delicately flushed, almost guiltily, before she looked away. “...Probably not.”

The other celebrations died down momentarily as the rest of the group stared between the two. “What’s going on?” Zack asked as Yuffie snapped a pic, temporarily blinding Cloud. Then Vincent, who had just set down the candles he was arranging on one of the tables against the wall, approached and stared at him too, as if seeing him properly for the first time.

Cloud set his beer down as the attention made his face heat up, though he pointedly tried to ignore the warmth blooming across his cheekbones. “What the hell, guys?” he asked again, this time his voice coming out in a wavering tone as he nervously patted his hair, wondering if he looked funny. After last week, he didn’t like this sort of attention on him. “Are you gonna keep staring or what?”

“Um, Cloud… do you, like… feel okay?” Aerith asked finally, her words soft and controlled, as if she were speaking to a child.

Cloud frowned. “Of course,” he replied, crossing his arms across his chest. “Why?”

“Yeah, what’s going on guys?” Barret chimed in as he stepped next to Marlene, as if sensing some kind of danger. Tifa wordlessly stepped around the bar to stand next to him as she too watched Aerith for answers.

Aerith pressed her lips together in thought. “Do you… feel cold?” she questioned then.

Cloud blinked. _Cold?_ his mind echoed as he thought about the goosebumps under his hoodie sleeves that had been rather persistent lately. Then he realized with dawning horror: _She’s talking about ghosts._

“No,” he said quickly, and Aerith bit her lip at his biting tone. “There’s _nothing_ here. Vincent and you, you guys… You guys _cleansed_ the place, didn’t you? So -”

“Let Aerith finish,” Vincent interrupted. Cloud shot him a scathing look.

Aerith winced. “Well,” she tentatively began, “I really don’t know how to tell you this, but… there’s a spirit attached to you.”

“You’ve got a new friend,” Vincent added in a deadpan.

Cloud’s lips pinched together. “No way,” he replied. “It’s not possible.”

“He’s a powerful one, too,” Aerith continued as if he hadn’t spoken at all. “I recognize his energy.” With that she pulled out a stool beside Tifa before glancing at Cloud with a smile; but no, she wasn’t smiling at Cloud at all, but at the empty air beside him. Patting the seat, she continued, “Come sit down, and tell me about yourself.”

Cloud shot the air beside him a worried glance, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. “You’re not… talking to me, are you?” he finally asked Aerith.

Vincent was the one to reply, “Nope.” The corner of his lips twitched into a small, rare smirk. “Apparently, you brought back a spirit from the Shinra Manor.”

“No fair!” Yuffie cried from beside Vincent. “ _I_ want a ghost friend! How come _Cloud_ gets to have a ghost friend and I don’t? He has like, the personality of a paper bag!”

Cloud glared at her. “Do not!”

“Do too! Tell him, Barret! Tell Cloud how boring he is!”

“Hell nah,” Barret replied as he nursed his beer. “I ain’t getting in the middle of this.”

“But I will!” Zack’s grin widened. “Hey Cloud, you’re _super_ bor -”

Cloud shifted his glare to Zack. “If you finish that sentence, I _swear_ I will hide all of your protein powder.”

Zack blanched. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“I would.”

Zack made a face, as if weighing his options, before his expression eventually cleared. Turning to Yuffie, he said, “Sorry, but I can’t betray my roommate.”

Cloud was about to add more, but Aerith’s faint laugh cut through his thoughts like the ragged edge of a knife as he remembered she was conversing with a _ghost_. “Well, he’s not that attuned to spirits,” she was saying as she twisted the cap off her drink, and it was very obvious that she was talking to herself… or to the spirit sitting on the empty stool across from here. “So, you’ll have to be a bit patient with him, okay?”

She spoke as if talking to spirits was something she did every day, but if Cloud put some thought into it, this probably _was_ something that did on the daily. The thought made him grimace.

“Well, you can’t blame him for not noticing you… Oh?” There was a beat of silence as if _something_ was replying, and then Aerith looked at him again with new eyes. “He says you’ve seen him before, that he helped you back in the manor during the...” Her voice pettered off. “Well… you know.”

Cloud nearly flinched as Hojo’s half living body snapped into cutting-edge focus in his mind’s eye, and he did his best to shove the nauseating image away. It was immediately replaced by another memory, this one a wavering image of a spirit with long, silver hair; the same spirit that had pointed out the rusty pipe that he had used to cut his bindings, and who had also showed him where the hidden lever was so that they could all escape. 

Recognition must have shown on his face, because Aerith’s expression warmed into a smile. “His name is Sephiroth,” she told him. “He also told me that he’s met you before, back when you were really little.” Her eyes flicked to the empty space before shifting back to him. “Apparently you had accidently locked yourself in the room outside the basement? And he helped free you, and also helped you get out by playing the piano.”

“Really?” Tifa glanced at him, wide-eyed. “You never told me that…”

Cid scoffed. “So a ghost had to play a piano to free your sorry ass?”

But Cloud couldn’t find it within himself to respond, he could only stare at Aerith in shock wondering how the _hell_ she knew all of that. His mind supplied the answer immediately, of course: A ghost _was_ telling her everything. Worse, it was all _true._ He remembered being trapped in that room. He remembered his heart fluttering so loudly that it roared in his ears, remembered strange whispers and horrible scratching noises and faint laughter behind the wall, and remembered how cold the door handle had felt when he had futilely banged against it. 

But then he remembered how the door had suddenly swung open, as if all on its own, and then the faint, cheerful notes from a piano fluttering down the hall. He remembered how he had chased after the sound thinking that it was someone who had come looking for him, and after stumbling in the dark and nearly tumbling down the stairs, he had found the piano empty and cold. He had also found the front door slightly open though, and had run out into the night without ever looking back.

Cloud leaned heavily against the sink as the memory faded, and he had to prop his hands behind him to support his weight.

Lifting his head, he weakly asked, “Are you sure?” Aerith nodded, and then Tifa placed a gentle, warm hand on his shoulder as if to comfort it. Cloud appreciated the gesture, but he hardly felt it. He was far too consumed by the fact that his _entire life_ had involved ghosts in some way or another. Sure, this was a part-time job, but this newfound knowledge seemed _different_ somehow.

Zack, who had been listening intently, only brandished his beer. “Welcome to the team, Sephiroth the ghost!” he said loud enough to startle Cloud. “Don’t be too hard on Cloud, the poor kid has been denying the paranormal as long as I’ve known him.”

Cid huffed and spit out his cigarette, exchanging its presence at his lips for a long, extended dreg of his bottle. “This shit is getting too weird,” he announced. “Let’s get the show on the road already.”

“Cid!” Barret glowered at him over Marlene’s head. “Watch your language!”

Marlene didn’t seem to notice though, as she had her keen eye on Cloud. She tilted her head in confusion. “Uncle Cloud has a new ghost friend?” she asked as she glanced up at her dad.

Barret shrugged and brought his arm around her, and his reply was utterly unenthusiastic as he said, “Guess so.”

“So now what?” Zack asked. “Is Sephiroth here going to give a proper introduction? Or do we, like, need to introduce ourselves?”

Aerith glanced at the empty space, then after a pause and a giggle, said, “I think he would prefer to just observe for now. He doesn’t seem like the, ah, ‘talkative type'.”

“All right,” Yuffie declared as she rubbed her hands together in excitement and smiled mischievously at the group. “Are we ready to get this party started, then?”

“I wouldn’t call it a _party_ ,” Tifa said solemnly, although the barest smile warmed her features. “But... sure.”

Zack jumped over to the jukebox and within a few moments, a loud, obnoxious tune began playing. Tifa removed her hand from Cloud’s arm and, shooting him a quick, tentative smile, grabbed a fresh drink for herself before helping set out candles. Marlene hopped off her stool to go help, the sight of dancing flames attracting her like a moth. Barret cautiously followed, making sure she stayed far enough away from any fire while Vincent began shuffling through a deck of tarot cards he had brought for the occasion. That left Aerith, Cloud, and Sephiroth the ghost.

_Outstanding._

“Well?” Aerith’s voice snagged Cloud’s attention, and when he turned towards her, there was a soft smile on her lips. “Do you want to talk to him?” 

He was taken aback. As horrifying as the thought was… “I can… do that?” he asked slowly as he contemplated his answer.

“Of course!”

Cloud looked from her to the empty stool and back again. On one hand, the _last_ thing he wanted to do was speak to a spirit - _particularly_ one that knew him. But on the other hand, there was no way he could go back to ignoring that spirits existed in the first place, not after what happened back in the manor. Since this one decided to attach itself to him… well, might as well start demanding some answers.

“Fine,” he said as he took the stool beside her. “What do I need to do?”

“This,” Aerith simply replied, reaching across the table to tug his hand toward her. She placed hers on top so that they overlapped and were parallel to each other. Cloud watched, anxiety plaguing his nerves, as she closed her eyes and bowed her head. It took a few moments where Cloud’s eyes darted to his friends all hanging out and setting up the little memorial, before he felt the heavy presence in his mind he’d assumed to be stress and trauma grow tenfold. His eyes darted back to Aerith again and then to the suddenly _new_ presence sitting next to her.

Time didn’t slow this time as Cloud stared at the man - no, the _ghost_ \- who had helped him the week before. The man stared impassively, green eyes glittering above an inhumanly pale face with thin lips. Silver hair flowed gently down his back and over the old, white hospital gown he wore. He was there, sure as day, right in front of him.

“Sephiroth,” Cloud breathed.

The ghost gave a small nod of acknowledgment. “You are Cloud,” a low voice, thin and almost like the breeze, replied.

Cloud swallowed thickly. “So? You gonna tell me why you’ve attached to me?” he asked quietly as he studied every move the ghost made.

This elicited a low, smooth chuckle from the other. “You were the only one to return,” he said cryptically. “The only person who wanted to help. You would not be yet another victim.”

The form in front of him flickered like the television had earlier, and then he was gone. Cloud felt the surprising sting of disappointment flow through his veins as the many, many questions he had died on his lips.

“Sorry,” Aerith said sheepishly. “It takes a lot of energy to hold him there. If you stay bonded for awhile though, you should begin to be able to communicate better.”

“If we stay _bonded_ … _excuse_ me?” Cloud croaked. 

She shrugged and grinned, dropping his hand. He withdrew it quickly like he’d been stung, and the heavy presence returned to a dull throb in the back of his head.

“Hey Spikey, Vincent is going to do a tarot reading for Tifa!” Zack announced from across the room. “Get over here and bring your new friend!”

Aerith giggled and hopped off her stool to join the others. She shot a knowing wink at Cloud before leaving him alone with, Cloud assumed, the ghost of Sephiroth.

His brow furrowed. “Look,” he murmured at the space where the other had just been moments earlier. “This is weird. Like, _really_ weird. I don’t know how to… do this. If you’re going to hang around or whatever, just...give me a head’s up before you go haunting my possessions, okay?”

He didn’t know if he expected an answer from the being, and he didn’t get one. The silence was something of a comfort though, and so Cloud wandered over to check out what everybody else was doing and did his damndest not to think about the fact that a _spirit_ was _attached_ to him like a _leech._

Vincent’s calm voice floating through the bar. “So how about we do just a basic three-card spread?” he told Tifa, who was sitting across from him at the table. Her back was rimrod straight, and her hands were clenched on her thighs. “Anything in particular you’d like to know?”

Tifa made a face. “Like… what?”

“Well, have you had any questions you’ve been asking yourself? Anything in particular you’ve been wondering?”

“Um…” Tifa’s gaze darted around at the rest, landing on Cloud before flicking back to Vincent. “Not really, to be honest. Maybe someone else can go before me?”

Vincent began shuffling the cards while Tifa spoke. “No, it’s fine,” he replied. “I’ll do the reading I usually do for myself, then. It’s called the _Find Balance_ tarot spread, and I’ve found that it’s quite enlightening.”

“Ooh, Vincent’s going straight for the deep stuff,” Zack said.

Cid shot him a dry look. “You hush now. This is some serious shit.”

“Never thought I’d hear _you_ say that,” Yuffie teased.

“Well,” Cid began with a stiff, awkward roll of his shoulders, “I’m just sayin’, this ain’t somethin’ to make light of.”

Cloud, who was standing off to the side, only pursed his lips and said nothing. He wasn’t sure if he could handle anymore _serious shit,_ as Cid so eloquently put it, for the night. 

“Sure, that sounds good to me,” Tifa replied, though she nervously bit her lip. “How should we start?”

Vincent laid his deck flat on the table between them. “First, place your hand on the deck and close your eyes.”

Tifa did as instructed. “Like this?”

“Yes. And then imagine your body is made out of light - nod if you can see that in your mind’s eye - and then imagine that light traveling into the deck. This will imbue the deck with your energy so that it reads _your_ balance, and not mine.”

“This for real?” Barret muttered beside Cloud.

“Don’t ask me,” Cloud replied under his breath. “Remember, we saw a half-dead animated zombie thing not too long ago and now I apparently have a ghost attached to me. I’m not exactly an expert of what’s real at the moment.”

Barret huffed, amused. “Right.”

“Okay,” Tifa said after a lengthy pause. Her eyes were still closed, and her hands remained flat on the deck. “Now what?”

“Now you can open your eyes,” Vincent replied, “and we can begin.”

He dealt out three cards between them and, setting aside the deck, began to speak.

“The first card represents what you are neglecting at the moment. The second symbolizes what you are too focused on, and lastly, the third dictates how you will find balance between the two.” He flicked his ruby eyes up to Tifa. “Does that make sense?”

Tifa straightened even further in her chair. “Perfectly,” she replied.

“Uh, should we stay for this?” Zack murmured to Cid.

Cid shot Zack a scathing look. “Didn’t I tell you to _hush?_ ”

Vincent suddenly flipped the first card… and immediately his lips pitched into a frown. “Interesting,” he murmured before glancing back at Tifa. “This is the Emperor card in the reversed position, which stands for _rigorous, powerlessness, avoidance,_ and _chaos._ But going a little deeper than that, the Emperor is able to calm chaos and offer authoritarian guidance. He also represents leadership, protection, and providing.”

“Well, Tifa is definitely the leader of our team,” Zack chipped in.

“And-and-and the Shinra manor was definitely chaotic!” Yuffie quickly added. “I mean, it was _madness!_ ”

“And the entire time,” Tifa murmured, almost too low to hear, “I felt powerless. I… I couldn’t _help_ anyone. I didn’t really lead, protect, _or_ provide. So why did this card...”

Vincent smiled, soft and small. “It sounds like you are neglecting your own worth, then. Because Tifa, as someone who was also in the Shinra manor, you were essential to all of our safe returns.”

“You also saved your team by calling us,” Barret added, his voice strangely loud in the quiet space..

Vincent’s voice, by contrast, was gentle. “Of course, this card also calls into question the fact that you are _avoiding_ something. Any idea what that could be?”

Tifa’s brow pinched. “Well… nothing comes to mind immediately.”

There was a pause, but then Vincent nodded as if this was to be expected. “Perhaps it will come to you later during our reading,” he easily replied, and then flipped the second card. His expression then brightened. “Ah - the King of Cups.”

“What does that mean?” Tifa asked, her tone worried.

Vincent hummed. “This card stands for _balance_ , _generosity_ , _strength_ , and _restraint_. Considering that this card represents what you are _too_ focussed on… well,” he continued with almost a teasing smile, “what do _you_ think that means?”

“Shouldn’t you be the one figuring that out?” Zack commented.

Cid shot him a scathing look. “Didn’t I tell ya tell _shut up?_ ”

“Well… I guess I have been trying to, well…” Tifa flushed, and after a pause, continued, “...seem… stronger than I really am, I guess.”

“But you are strong?” Cloud said without thinking.

“I know, but like…” Tifa harshly sighed. “Like, I _hate_ ghosts. I _hate_ them, and yet I’m trying to lead you guys and I’m terrible at that -”

“You _definitely_ aren’t,” Aerith cut in.

“I definitely _am,”_ Tifa corrected before sighing and letting it drop, “so I guess… yeah.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “That’s something that I’ve been really, uh, hyperfocusing on during missions, I guess.”

“Fair enough,” Vincent replied, and then flipped the third card.

His eyes widened, and then his expression warmed. “Interesting,” he murmured. “The Well.”

“Ooh, I like this one,” Cid muttered.

“The Well is the birthplace of ideas, inspiration, and transformation, and it stands for _nurturing, opportunity, nature,_ and _creativity._ In other news,” Vincent continued, lifting his head until he met Tifa’s gaze, “knowledge flows freely to those who seek it.”

Tifa’s brow furrowed as she looked over the cards. _“Seeking knowledge,_ huh? And that’s supposed to help me find balance?”

“Correct,” Vincent replied. “Maybe it is time to return to the basics of ghost hunting; to find your inspiration, and remember why you went into this business despite your fear of ghosts… and why you _want_ to lead a team despite your fear of ghosts, and I’m sure that the rest will come naturally.”

Tifa blinked in surprise. “That… That actually helps, Vincent. Thanks.” She smiled at him. “I appreciate it.”

Vincent slowly nodded in response.

Yuffie bounded to the table. “And now do me next!” she shouted.

Zack feigned a wince. “What an unfortunate choice of words…”

Cloud slowly exhaled and removed himself from the conversation, choosing instead to sit at the bar and nurse his drink - albeit probably not alone, as Sephiroth the ghost was probably hovering watchfully nearby. A small part of him wanted to ask Vincent if he could do a reading on him - _privately,_ of course - but a much larger, more vocal part of him screamed that it was a bad idea. His life had only gotten more complicated thanks to the supernatural, and he _certainly_ didn’t need to go out of his way to look for it in his downtime, thank you very much.

There was a faint clatter as a stool was pulled out next to his, and then Tifa was sliding in beside him. “Don’t want a reading?” she asked.

The drink tasted bitter on his tongue. “Not really.”

“Why not?”

 _There are some things that aren’t worth knowing,_ Cloud nearly said, but caught himself. “Just don’t think it would be useful for me,” he replied.

“That’s what I thought at first, but the reading surprised me.” Tifa took a small sip of her own drink, and the dark liquid reflected the somber light in her carmine eyes. “Maybe… Maybe I _do_ need to start from the beginning. I’ve just been so caught up in being a leader _,_ in finding jobs and marks and better equipment, that maybe I’ve forgotten what my goal really was.” She lifted her head, and her dark hair curtained her shoulders as she glanced at him. “Maybe it’s time for a break.”

Cloud shifted against the stool. “If that’s what you think,” he replied, but disappointment flickered across Tifa’s expression and left him wondering if he had said the wrong thing. “I mean,” he continued, fumbling now, “everyone needs a break every now and then. And you’ve been working harder than anyone, so…”

He let his voice trailed off when he noticed that Tifa was now smiling. It was a soft smile, a small smile, but a smile all the same. “Thanks, Cloud.”

He nodded, relieved. “Sure.”

“Hey!” Yuffie bounded over to them. Thin white candles were bundled in her arms, as well as a sizable collection of matches and a single cigarette lighter - undoubtedly swindled off of Cid. “We’re starting.”

Cloud arched an eyebrow. “Starting?” he prompted, but Tifa seemed to know exactly what Yuffie was talking about and slid off of her seat.

“We’re going to have a small memorial service for the people that lost their lives at the manor,” Tifa explained when Cloud, clearly confused, also slid off of his seat. “It just didn’t seem right to _not_ do anything, you know?”

Cloud’s mood dimmed. “...Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.”

After Yuffie handed them some candles, they moved to join the rest of the team outside on the patio. Aerith and Vincent stood at the front with their candles, Aerith holding a piece of paper, and Cloud pointedly ignored the furrowed look she shot his direction as he stepped up to join them.

“Crazy, huh?” Zack said as he moved to stand beside Cloud. “To think that we could have easily become ghosts ourselves… Makes me jittery to think about,” he admitted with a low laugh.

“Me too,” Cloud replied, his voice just as low.

“I have to sleep with at least one light on now.”

Cloud himself had bought a sizable nightlight the day after they had escaped the manor, but he wasn’t going to bring it up. Instead he only nodded, his go-to nonverbal response, and turned his attention back to Barret and Cid. Barret was holding Marlene’s hand, and his eyes seemed misty in the dim lighting.

All of a sudden, Aerith began to read off of the paper she held.

 _“Lynden Currant,”_ she began. _“Sharron Beasley. Roger Haines. Rebekka Haines. Caitlin Cambell…”_

It took Cloud a moment, but with heavy realization he realized that what Aerith was reading was a list of names of everyone who had died at the Shinra Manor.

Everyone.

_“... Irene Maddox. Jacob Whitworth. Theo Holmes. Stephanie Lam…”_

Aerith continued to read, the list so long that she had to reposition her hands on the paper to continue, and each name weighed heavier and heavier within Cloud. It _hurt_. It was a physical ache within him, as if he had swallowed shattered glass, their sharp pieces serrating something deep inside. He inhaled a shuddering breath to calm himself.

_“... Nora Durham. Grace Rossi. Brook Blackwell. Sephiroth Hojo…”_

The air seemed to shift when Aerith spoke that last name, and for a brief second, time seemed to slow. A misty figure was standing beside her - _Sephiroth,_ Cloud instinctively knew - and when his name was spoken, he turned back to Cloud and smiled. Time hung suspended between them, as if it were a fluttering bird caught in fine wire.

And then, without warning, time started again.

Vincent cleared his throat and began to speak. His voice was deep and rough, and yet his monotone was strangely calming as it drifted across the dirty road. “Know when to fight,” he recited, “and when to seek peace. Let us know peace for as long as the moon shall rise, as long as the rivers shall flow, as long as the sun shall shine. Let us know peace.”

“Walk in the light,” Aerith added in a murmur, and then lit her candle. Vincent pressed their wicks together so that his would light as well, then helped light Barret’s, and so on until a small flame too danced on Cloud’s own candle. The world was stained orange, their shadows trembling in the wavering candlelight against the road below the porch. The darkness of night, briefly chased away by their dancing flames, seemed darker on the outskirts because of it.

Yet Cloud felt lighter. Breathing in, he felt like the air was fresh and welcoming after being submerged in water. A weight had been lifted off his chest and his lungs could expand. Given the startled expressions of those around him, they could breathe a bit easier as well.

Yuffie suddenly hissed behind him. “Are you _serious?”_ she murmured. “You really want to see the ghosts again that badly, huh?”

“Oh, hush,” Cid said in reply, and then exhaled his cigarette smoke as Cloud turned to see what the fuss was about. “I’m a grown ass adult.”

“It’s disrespectful,” Yuffie added in a harsh whisper. “ _Chimney_.”

The lit end of Cig’s cigarette flared red. “You kids are the worst,” he grumbled, but with an exhale, he tossed the cigarette in his water glass. “I’m going to haunt your twig ass when I die.”

“No you won’t. _One,_ of course you’re gonna be dying earlier than me if you keep that up. And _two,_ I’ll hire Zack’s ghost to guard me so you can’t haunt me.”

Cid glared at her. “Yeah? Well, I’ll hire Vincent’s ghost to nullify Zack’s ghost, so there.”

“Hell nah, my ghost can’t be nullified,” Zack piped up. Candlelight danced across his features, and somewhere behind him, both Tifa and Aerith giggled to themselves. “Besides, my ghost will team up with Cloud’s ghost, and then we’ll be unstoppable.”

“My ghost will not associate with your ghost,” Cloud replied, and he inwardly wondered if he’d lost his mind.

Tifa cleared her throat. “Anyway, guys… Thanks for all coming out tonight.” Her figure was backlit in gold from the streetlights, and coupled with the small candle flickering in her hand, she looked something like a spirit herself. “I know that we had a tough time back in the manor, and I know that this small ceremony couldn’t have been easy -”

“It was perfect, Tifa,” Aerith cut in. Smiling at the dark-haired woman, she continued, “It really was. And I know for a fact that the spirits from the manor really appreciated it, too.”

Vincent nodded his agreement, and Tifa’s expression softened. “That’s… really good to hear,” she admitted. “Really good.”

“So, what next?” Zack asked. The tips of his fingers had been dipped in wax, and he was holding his hand up so that they could dry. “When’s our next call?”

Cid glanced at Tifa, and at her nod, turned to the group. “Well, considering the absolute shitshow the Shinra Manor turned out to be, Tifa and I discussed it a bit inside.”

 _When?_ Cloud thought, but kept his thoughts to himself.

“We’re thinking about going up north for the holidays,” Tifa continued.

“Like, for a vacation?” Yuffie asked, starry-eyed in excitement.

Tifa grinned. “That’s right.”

“And no ghost hunting whatsoever?” Zack added. “Like, we’re just going there to hang out, chill, build snowmen, or whatever?”

Tifa let out a laugh. “I think you guys deserve something like that, considering how hard you worked.”

Barret loudly huffed. “Hell yeah we do!”

But Cloud remained suspicious. “Like, no ghost hunting?” he said, and his voice sounded unnaturally loud. “Like, at all?”

That didn’t seem right, especially with this group. Like, whenever they got together - except for post-hunt parties, like now - they were _always_ ghost hunting. To go on an entire vacation somewhere without bringing any of their gear… well, it just didn’t sit right with him. It was like rearranging the stars in the sky, or having the sun rise from the west instead of the east. It was, simply put, _wrong._

Tifa smiled. “That’s right,” she told him. “No ghost hunting at all.”

Cloud opened his mouth to protest more, but then Zack’s arm was draped over his shoulders. Cloud looked up to scowl at him. “Why are you trying to fight it?” Zack asked. “It’s a _vacation!_ It’s a _gift!_ Don’t fight it, _embrace_ it.”

“Yeah, maybe a vacation is exactly what you need, Cloud,” Yuffie added with a sharp grin. “Maybe you’ll even be relaxed enough to finally dislodge that stick shoved up your -”

“Do you mind?” Cloud protested, even as Zack tilted his head back and laughed. “I’m _perfectly_ relaxed, thank you very much.”

“Cloud, you’re about as relaxed as a werewolf at a dog show,” Cid pointed out.

“What is _that_ supposed to mean?”

Cid spit on the ground. “It means that you _ain’t._ ”

“ _Guys._ ” Aerith had a hand on her hip, and was watching all of them with a disapproving expression. “Remember why we’re here, which is to respect the spirits that had passed on and to move on from what had happened in the manor. You can argue about vacations _another_ time.”

“Where are we going, anyway?” Yuffie asked.

Tifa grinned. “The North Crater,” she replied. “To the Icicle Inn.”

Cloud was fairly certain that the Icicle Inn was supposed to be haunted - in fact, he would bet money on it and he was no gambler - but decided not to mention anything. If that’s where Tifa decided to go, then he’d go along with it.

But that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t bring a camera or thermometer... just in case.

_Fin_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We hope that everyone enjoyed the chapter!
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**Author's Note:**

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